Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for yielding me the time.

Mr. Chairman, among other things, the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act would make it easier for some of the biggest banks and other financial institutions in this country to merge. At a time in America where big institutions are becoming bigger and small institutions are being driven out of business, I think we have to ask whether this is a good idea. At a time in America when the people at top are making out like bandits, the middle class is shrinking and poverty is increasing. I think we have to ask whether it is proper for the United States Congress to give ``regulatory relief'' to huge multibillion dollar institutions. I think not.

Specifically, this bill would reduce the Federal review process for bank mergers from 30 days to a mere 5 days. This bill would allow the Officer of Comptroller Currency to waive notice requirements for national bank mergers located within the same State. This bill would end the prohibition of out-of-state banks merging with in-state banks that have been in existence for less than 5 years. This bill also gives Federal thrifts the ability to merge with one or more of their nonthrift affiliates; and, finally, this bill would eliminate certain reporting requirements for banks' CEOs in regard to inside-lending activities.

Mr. Chairman, I have serious concerns about the provisions in this bill; but equally important, I have major concerns about what this bill is not addressing, what it is not addressing, and what the American people and consumers all over this country are deeply concerned about.

For example, while the prime rate is at a historic low of 4 percent and the Federal Reserve has lowered the Federal funds rate 13 times to a mere 1 percent; credit card issuers are making record-breaking profits by ripping off consumers through outrageously high interest rates of 25 to 30 percent. How come in the midst of giving the ability of large banks to become larger, we forgot about demanding that interest rates go down so that people who already are hurting are not forced to pay usurious interest rates. I guess we just forgot about that.

Mr. Chairman, at a time when banks are making record-breaking $7.3 billion in late fees they collect from consumers, another major rip- off, there is nothing in this bill that would bring down these excessive fees. I guess we forgot about that issue as well.

Mr. Chairman, every Member of this Congress understands that throughout America we are hemorrhaging decent-paying jobs in manufacturing and in information technology; and one of the areas, one of the industries where we are hemorrhaging good-paying jobs is in the financial services industry. No mention, no mention in this bill of a concern that with these mergers comes the loss of decent-paying jobs. Maybe when we talk about financial services, we might want to talk about the ordinary people who do business in banks rather than just the needs of the CEOs who make huge compensation packages running these banks.

Mr. Chairman, while credit card issuers are ripping off middle class Americans by charging sky-high interest rates and outrageous fees, credit card CEOs are laughing all the way to the bank; and mark my words, this will be an issue that the American people will demand this Congress to address. We cannot ignore the fact that scam after scam is forcing hard-pressed American people to pay 20, 25 percent a year in interest rates on their credit card. That issue will come before the United States Congress.

In the midst of all of these rip-offs, if I may use that word, the compensation packages of the CEOs are going sky high. Over the past 5 years, the CEO of Citigroup made over $500 million in total compensation and the CEO of Capital One made over $169 million in total compensation. When we deregulate these industries, maybe we want to say a word on that issue as well.

Bottom line is that this legislation works on behalf of the largest financial institutions. It does not work on behalf of consumers, and I respectfully ask for a ``no'' vote on it.

Mr. Speaker, as the only Independent in the House of Representatives, my views are a little bit different than many of my Democratic and Republican colleagues. So I want to share some thoughts today, thoughts that are not necessarily often expressed here on the floor of the House or often expressed, unfortunately, in our corporately controlled media. Also I would like to mention to Members of the House that if they need any further information on any of the issues that we are going to be discussing they can get it from our Web site which is www.Bernie.house.gov.

Mr. Speaker, the corporate media does not talk about it terribly much, and we do not talk about it terribly often here on the floor of the House, but the United States of America is rapidly becoming three separate nations. We are becoming a Nation which has an increasingly wealthy elite composed of a small number of people with incredible wealth and power. That is one part of our Nation. The other part of our Nation is a middle class, the vast majority of our people, and that part of our society is shrinking. Middle class is shrinking. The average worker in America is working longer hours for lower wages. And the third part of our society, the low-income people, what we are seeing is a substantial increase in poverty, and we are seeing millions and millions of the poorest people in this country struggling hard just to keep their heads above water. One America incredibly rich, another America working longer hours for low wages, another America struggling hard to make ends meet.

Mr. Speaker, there has always been a wealthy elite in this country. That is not new. And there has always been a gap between the rich and the poor. But the disparities in wealth and income that currently exist in this country today have not been seen since the 1920s. In other words, instead of becoming a more egalitarian Nation with a growing middle class, we are becoming a Nation with by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income in the entire industrialized world. It is not England with its royalty. It is the United States of America which has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of major countries.

Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. The wealthiest 1 percent, yes, that is right, the wealthiest 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. The CEOs of our largest corporations now earn 500 times what their workers are making, while their employees are being squeezed, being forced to pay more for their health insurance, while pensions are being cut back for workers, while retiree benefits are being cut.

The CEOs of large corporations are making out like bandits. And I am not just talking about the crooks who ran Enron or WorldCom or Arthur Andersen. I am talking about the highly respected CEOs like the retired former head of General Electric, Jack Welch, who, when he retired in 2000, he received $123 million in compensation and a $10-million-a-year pension benefit for his lifetime, and meanwhile he cut back on the jobs that GE had in America and shipped substantial amounts of those jobs over to China and Mexico. But he did take good care of his own needs.

And I am talking about Lou Gerstner of IBM. He is the former head of IBM, who, from 1997 to 2002, received $366 million in compensation while slashing the pension benefits of his employees.

I am talking about people like C.A. Heimbold, Jr. of Bristol-Myers Squibb, who received almost $75 million in 2001 while helping to make it almost impossible for many seniors in our country to afford the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs.

Mr. Speaker, we do not talk about this issue enough, but we should, and that is that today the Nation's 13,000 wealthiest families, who constitute 1/100 of 1 percent of the population, a tiny, tiny percentage of Americans, receive almost as much income as the bottom 20 million families in the United States of America; 1/100 of 1 percent receive as much income as the bottom 20 million families. And I defy anyone to tell me that that is in any way fair or that is in any way what the United States is supposed to be.

New data from the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, shows that the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of income more than doubled from 1979 to the year 2000. In other words, we are moving in exactly the wrong direction. The gap is such that the wealthiest 1 percent had more

money to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent.

Mr. Speaker, according to data from the CBO, between 1973 and 2000, the average real inflation-accounted-for income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually declined by 7 percent, the average worker seeing a decline. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent. The income of the top \1/10\ of 1 percent rose by 343 percent, and the income of the top \1/100\ of 1 percent rose by 599 percent.

I know I am throwing out a lot of figures, and I suspect that I am boring some people, but the important point to be made here is the middle class is shrinking, and the people at the very top are doing extraordinarily well.

Mr. Speaker, when I was growing up, the expectation was that for someone in the middle class, that person in that family would be working 40 hours a week and would earn enough money to take care of the needs of a family. One person, 40 hours a week, earning enough money to take care of the whole family. I think, Mr. Speaker, we can all agree that that is no longer the reality for very many families in this country. What has happened is, because of the shrinking of the middle class, the decline in real wages, it is very rare indeed in my State of Vermont or in any State in this country that we see a situation in which both people in a marriage are not now forced to work, leaving kids at home or in child care.

In terms of what is happening to the middle class, we have lost over 3 million private sector jobs in the last 3 years, and with over 8 million workers unemployed, the unemployment rate today is at 5.4 percent. But I think we all know that that unemployment, the official unemployment statistic, very much understates the reality facing workers in America. Today if one is living in a high unemployment area, and if they have given up looking for work, they are not a statistic. If they are working part time and want to work full time, but there are no full-time jobs available, they are not a statistic. So the reality is that real unemployment is substantially higher than official statistics indicate.

In addition, of course, there are millions of Americans today with a college degree or higher education degrees who are working at jobs that require far less education than their abilities would provide.

Mr. Speaker, here is a point that I want to spend a little bit of time on: Importantly, over the last 3 years, of the 3.3 million private sector jobs that have been lost, over 2.8 million of those jobs were in the manufacturing sector. And one of the reasons for that is that we have a disastrous trade policy which almost tells corporate America, leave the United States of America, go to China, go to Mexico, go to some disparate Third World country where people are paid pennies an hour. That is what we want them to do.

The reality is that NAFTA has failed, our membership in the World Trade Organization has failed, and perhaps, above all, permanent normal trade relations with China has failed.

Mr. Speaker, the time is now, and it is long overdue for the United States Congress to stand up to corporate America, to stand up to the President of the United States, to stand up to the editorial writers all over this country who year after year after year have told us how wonderful unfettered free trade is, how many new jobs would be created. The results are in. They are wrong. Unfettered free trade has been a disaster for working Americans. It has been a disaster for the middle class. And it is high time we understood that. It is high time we ended our disastrous trade policies and begin to negotiate trade policies that work not just for corporate America, not just for CEOs who make huge compensation packages, but trade policies that are fair for the working people of this country.

Mr. Speaker, one of the issues that is not talked about enough, is not talked about enough, is a very simple question, and the question is this: If in the last 20 or 30 years we have seen an explosion of technology, if we have seen the development of sophisticated computers, we have seen the development of e-mail, we have seen faxes, we have seen cell phones, we have seen satellite communications, we have seen robotics in factories, we are a Nation which has experienced a huge increase in productivity.

My question is, if the average worker today is far more productive than he or she was 20 years ago, why is that worker not working shorter hours and earning more money, rather than, in fact, working longer hours and earning less money? Why is it that in 1973 the average American worker in inflation-accounted-for wages made $14.09 an hour, while in 1998 he or she made only $12.77 an hour? There is something wrong when productivity is exploding and workers are earning less in real wages.

In terms of manufacturing, we have, unbelievably but true, we have in the last 3 years lost 16 percent, 16 percent, of the jobs in our manufacturing sector. At 14.3 million jobs, we are at the lowest number of factory jobs since 1950, since 1950. In my own State of Vermont, one of the smallest States in this country, we have lost some 9,300 manufacturing jobs since 2001. And here is the tragedy: We are not, when we lose manufacturing jobs, just losing jobs; we are losing good- paying jobs. In Vermont, for example, on average, someone working in manufacturing makes over $42,000 a year. That is a decent income. And when that employee loses his or her job, in almost every instance the new job that is acquired pays less than the job that has been lost and provides lower benefits.

So when we look at the economy, as important as it is to look at the rate of unemployment, it is equally important to look at the jobs that are being lost and what they paid and the new jobs that are being created and what they pay.

In that regard, a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that in 48 out of our 50 States, more good-paying jobs were lost than were created. Nationally what they discovered is that new jobs created paid 21 percent less than the jobs that were being lost. We are losing decent-paying manufacturing jobs, good benefits; we are growing low-wage service industry jobs, poor benefits. In my State of Vermont, those numbers are higher. The new jobs being created are 29 percent less than the jobs we are losing.

Now, when we talk about the economy, the $64 question on everybody's mind should be, what is going on for the future? What is going on for the future? Will the new jobs that are being created for our kids and our grandchildren be challenging jobs, be important jobs, be jobs that provide them with a middle-class standard of living? Those are the questions that parents are asking all over America; what kind of jobs will be available for our kids or our grandchildren?

Every 2 years the Bureau of Labor Statistics does a study, and what their study is about is to project and to study what new jobs will be created in largest numbers over the next 10 years. They just completed a study covering the years 2002 to 2012. In other words, the question is, in what occupations are we going to see the most job growth, and what occupations will we see the least job growth?

Let me quote from Business Week as to what the results of that study showed: ``According to a forecast released February 11 by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, a large share of new jobs will be in occupations that do not require a lot of education and pay below average.'' Pay below average. That is what is being projected in terms of new jobs for our kids.

Think for a moment. All of this technology, all of this emphasis on education, and the new jobs that are going to be created pay below average. Of the 10 occupations that are expected to grow the most, only 2 would require a bachelor's degree; 1 of those 10 jobs requires an associate degree, 7 require a high school degree.

So the conclusion there, the reality there, is that many of the new jobs being created for the future are waiters jobs and waitresses jobs, food preparation jobs, customer service representatives, jobs that require on-the-job training, jobs that do not require a college education and jobs that are low wage.

In other words, Mr. Speaker, it tells us that a profound lie is being perpetrated on the American people. It tells us that unless we change our public policies very quickly, the middle class will continue to shrink, and the jobs being created for the coming generations will, by and large, be low-wage, unskilled work. That is not the

America that I want to see for our kids or grandchildren, nor do I think that is the America that most Americans want to see.

Now, Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the decline of manufacturing, when we talk about the loss of decent-paying jobs to China and other countries, let us understand that this year alone the United States has had a $500 billion record-breaking trade deficit, $500 billion more in goods and services than we are sending out.

In 2003, the trade deficit with China alone, one country, was $120 billion, and that number is projected to increase in future years. In fact, the National Association of Manufacturers estimates that if present trends continue, our trade deficit with China will grow to $330 billion in 5 years. I hope those Members of Congress who told us how great most favored nation status with China would be, how great permanent normal trade relations would be, hear those numbers. $120 billion trade deficit today. The expectation is that in 5 years that number will be $330 billion.

Mr. Speaker, our disastrous trade policy is not only costing us millions of decent-paying jobs, it is squeezing wages. It is squeezing wages, because companies have now the opportunity to easily go to Mexico or to China. They are putting the squeeze on American workers, and they are saying if you do not take cuts in wages, if you do not put more into your own health care package out of your own pocket, we are going to be going.

This trend of wage squeezing is most apparent and most dramatic among people who only have a high school diploma who are now going out into the labor market. They are seeing a huge decline in wages today compared to what the case was 20 years ago, and the reason for that is obvious; 20 or 30 years ago there were factory jobs available that enabled high school graduates to earn a middle-class standard of living. Today those jobs are gone, and they are only available at McDonald's, at Wal-Mart, and people cannot make it on those wages.

I think, Mr. Speaker, if I were to summarize what is happening in our economy today, I think the easiest way to do it would be to point out that not so many years ago General Motors was the largest employer in America. General Motors, with a strong union, paid its workers and pays its workers today a living wage, good wages, good benefits.

But today, Mr. Speaker, the largest employer in the United States of America is Wal-Mart, not General Motors. That is the transition, from a GM economy of good wages, to a Wal-Mart economy of poverty wages. Today Wal-Mart employees earn $8.23 an hour, or $13,861 annually, wages which are below the poverty level. That is what is going on in the American economy. Our largest employer now pays workers wages that are below the poverty level.

Ironically, and pathetically, many of these workers qualify for Federal food stamp programs, which means that Wal-Mart is being directly subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Wal-Mart, our largest employer, has been sued by 27 States for not paying the overtime pay their workers are entitled to, and some months ago Federal agents raided their headquarters and 60 of their stores across this country, arresting 300 illegal workers in 21 States. That is our largest employer.

A recent study, and this is really incredible and an issue that I intend to move vigorously on, a recent study indicated that for every Wal-Mart Super Store that employed 200 workers, taxpayers were subsidizing these low-paid workers to the tune of $420,000 per year, which equates to about $2,100 per employee. Can you believe that? Wal- Mart salaries and benefits are so low that taxpayers throughout this country have got to provide health care benefits and food stamp benefits and housing benefits to supplement the pathetically low wages that Wal-Mart, our largest employer, is providing.

Now, here you add insult to injury, Mr. Speaker. It turns out that while the taxpayers of this country, the middle class of this country, is subsidizing Wal-Mart, 5 out of the 10 wealthiest people in America are in, yes, you got it right, the Walton family, and the widow of Sam Walton as well. So these five people who own Wal-Mart are some of the wealthiest people in America. Each of them is worth about $20 billion. Five people owning Wal-Mart, $20 billion apiece, $100 billion for one family, and, guess what? The middle class of America is subsidizing their employees because they are paying their workers poverty wages.

Now, if that makes sense to somebody, please give my Web site an e- mail. You tell me, www.Bernie.house.gov. If that makes sense to you, you e-mail that to me. That is what the transformation of the American economy is all about, the loss of good-paying jobs, the creation of poverty-wage jobs.

Mr. Speaker, not only has permanent normal trade relations with China been a disaster, but so has NAFTA. We have an increased trade deficit with Mexico. We have lost many, many jobs to Mexico. The irony there is that people might think, well, you know, NAFTA was bad for workers in the United States, but maybe it helped the poor people in Mexico.

Well, think again. Think again. NAFTA has been a disaster for the poor and working people of Mexico. Since 1994, when NAFTA went into existence, the number of people classified as poor or extremely poor has risen from 62 million to 69 million out of a population of 100 million. Since 1994, Mexico's agricultural sector, their rural area, has lost 1.3 million jobs, which is one of the reasons that we are seeing an increase in illegal immigration.

Frankly, Mr. Speaker, it did not take a genius to predict that unfettered free trade with China would be a disaster, which is why I and many other Members in the House have opposed it from the beginning. When you have disciplined, educated people in China available to work at 20 or 30 cents an hour, and with corporations having the capability of bringing their Chinese-made products back into this country tariff- free, why would American corporations not shut down their plants in this country and run to China?

It did not take a genius, frankly, to anticipate that that would occur.

Now, Mr. Speaker, General Electric is one of the largest corporations in America, and here is what their CEO Jeffrey Immelt had to say about China at a GE investor meeting on December 6, 2002, and I put it up here on this chart. I think it is so important that the American people really should take a strong look at this statement from the leader, from the CEO of one of the largest corporations in America, and here is what he said: ``When I am talking to GE managers,'' GE is a conglomerate, they have many separate companies, ``When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China. You need to be there.'' And then he continues: ``I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to $5 billion. We are building a tech center in China. Every discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is extremely attractive.''

In other words, what Mr. Immelt is saying very directly, and virtually every other corporate head is saying, maybe not quite as overtly, is we are packing up, folks, and we are leaving. Why should we pay American workers 15 or 20 bucks an hour? Why should we allow unions to be formed? Why should we obey environmental regulations when we can go to China and have a workforce in which if workers there try to form a union, they go to jail. If they speak up for democratic rights, they go to jail. If they want environmental protection or worker safety, they go to jail. What a fantastic place for Mr. Immelt and his other CEO friends to move to, and that is precisely what they are doing. They are selling out the working people of this country; they are selling out this country entirely.

Should anybody be surprised that Motorola eliminated almost 43,000 American jobs in 2001 while investing over $3 billion in China, or that it plans to invest $10 billion there by the year 2006? Think about your State. Think about your community. Is Motorola building a new factory there? No, they are not. They are off in China.

Who would be shocked that General Electric has thrown hundreds of thousands of American workers out on the street while investing $1.5 billion in China? From 1975 to 1995, GE eliminated 269,000 jobs; and on and on it goes.

IBM signed deals to train 100,000 software specialists in China over 3 years.

Honeywell is moving rapidly to China. Should anyone be surprised that they have built 13 factories in China, or that Ethan Allen furniture has cut jobs at saw mills in America and 17 manufacturing plants, including the State of Vermont, as they move furniture manufacturing to China? And recently, Mr. Speaker, and this is very alarming, very alarming news, General Motors, one of the largest corporations in America, they have announced that they will be investing billions of dollars in China in order to build and manufacture automobile parts. Will this be the beginning of the end of the automobile industry? Will the automobile industry follow so many of the other industries as it shrinks and shrinks, and as our jobs go abroad, good-paying jobs?

Mr. Speaker, as I think many Americans know, just several weeks ago, the chairman of the President's Economic Council, President Bush's economic adviser made the outrageous statement that outsourcing in the long run is good for the United States. Outsourcing is good for the United States. And their report suggested that if products can be built cheaper in other countries, why, that is where they should be manufactured. What a disgrace. So workers who are making today 15 or 20 bucks an hour, well, yes, the products that they manufacture are going to be costing more to produce than when they are made in China by workers making 20 cents an hour. And the President's chief economic adviser says, well, that is where they should be manufactured. I think that is beyond comprehension.

Now, Mr. Speaker, as bad and as frightening and as disastrous as the decline of manufacturing is in the United States, there is another trend which is taking place which might even be more frightening. Now, over the years, from the first President Bush to President Clinton to this President Bush, from corporate America, from newspaper editorials, from defenders of our trade policy here on the floor of the House, what they told us is they said, well, yes, in free trade, unfettered free trade, there are winners and there are losers. Yes, we might lose some of those blue collar factory jobs; but do not worry, America, because while we lose those blue collar factory jobs, we are going to be creating new white collar information technology jobs that pay people much higher wages than those blue collar jobs that we are losing. That is what they told us.

Unfortunately, as the American people are beginning to learn big time, the advocates of unfettered free trade are wrong again. We now know that blue collar manufacturing jobs are not the only casualty of unfettered free trade. We now know that we are going to see and are seeing the loss of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of good-paying white-collar information technology jobs, many of them going to India and other countries.

According to Forrester Research, a major consultant on this issue, they said, ``Over the next 15 years, 3.3 million U.S. service industry jobs, $136 billion in wages, will move offshore.'' The information technology industry will lead the initial overseas exodus. Among many other companies moving high-tech jobs abroad is Microsoft, which is spending $750 million over the next 3 years on research and development on outsourcing in China.

Recently, Intel Corporation chairman Andy Grove warned that the U.S. could lose the bulk of its information technology jobs to overseas competitors in the next decade, largely to India and China. In other words, Mr. Speaker, not only has our unfettered free trade cost us much of our textile industry, our footware industry, our apparel industry, our steel industry, our tool and die industry, our electronics industry, our furniture industry, and many other industries. It is now going to cost us millions of high-tech jobs as well.

Mr. Speaker, just last week, I sat down in my office with eight workers from the State of Vermont who work for National Life Insurance Company, and they told me that their jobs and the jobs of many of their colleagues will soon be going to India, and that in the near future, they will be sitting next to Indian workers and training them on how to do their jobs. And that is what is happening throughout America. Corporate America is selling out not only blue collar workers; they are selling out white collar workers.

According to the University of California at Berkeley Business School, let me quote from a study that came out on October 29, 2003. This is the University of California Berkeley Business School: ``A ferocious new wave of outsourcing of white collar jobs is sweeping the United States,'' according to a study published by the University of California Berkeley researchers who say the trend could leave as many as 14 million service jobs in the United States vulnerable. The study also indicates that jobs remaining in the U.S. could be subject to pressure for lower wages.

And why would that be? Well, here are some comparisons between wages in the U.S. and India where a lot of these high-tech jobs are going. In the U.S., a telephone operator earns $12.50 an hour; in India, less than a dollar an hour. A payroll clerk in the U.S. averages $15 an hour, while in India that person makes less than $2 an hour. So what we are beginning to see, what we are beginning to see in occupations such as medical transcription services, stock market research for financial firms, customer service centers, legal online database research, payroll and other back-office activities, what we are now seeing is those jobs, often good-paying jobs, are also heading out of this country.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear on several issues. I am not anti-Chinese. I am not anti-Indian. I am not a xenophobe. I am an internationalist. I am more than aware that 1 billion people on this planet live on less than a dollar a day, and I think that the United States and the other countries in the industrialized world have a moral obligation to do everything that we can so that children get the education they need in developing countries, people get the health care and the prescription drugs that they need, that the water that people drink around the world is drinkable. That is our moral obligation. But in order to help poor people around the world, we do not have to destroy the middle class of this country. There are other ways to do that. And ironically, many of these neo-liberal-type approaches are being rejected in Latin America and many other countries around the world because they are not working. The IMF approach, the World Bank approach are being rejected in country after country where governments are being forced to cut back on education, health care, and food subsidies. People do not want to see foreign companies coming in, driving out locally owned manufacturing and their locally owned business.

So the issue is not, do we help poor people around the world. We do. But do we do it in ways that do not destroy the middle class in this country, and I think we can.

The bottom line, Mr. Speaker, is we have got to end the race to the bottom. The goal of our economic policy should be to lift up poor people in the world, not lower the standard of living of American workers. And, Mr. Speaker, that is why, among other things, I have introduced legislation which would terminate, end completely, permanent normal trade relations with China. Trade in itself is a good thing, but it is only a good thing when it works for both sides. The New York Yankees do not trade their number one shortstop for a third-string, minor leaguer and say, well, that is just trade. You trade for equal value. And I believe that the United States has got to negotiate trade agreements with China, India, any country on Earth that work for them and work for us, but that are not one-sided, that work only for the CEOs of large corporations and work against the best interests of the middle class in this country.

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about what is happening to the middle class, when we talk about the loss of decent-paying jobs, when we talk about the growing gap between the rich and the poor, we should also mention something that rarely, rarely gets discussed on the floor of this House.

That is, that the American worker today is now working longer hours than the worker in any other industrialized country. Over the last 30 years, workers in middle-income, married-couple families with children have added an average of 20 weeks at work,

the equivalent of 5 more months. Most of the increase comes from working wives, many more of whom entered the labor market over this period, adding more work, more weeks per year and more hours per year; in fact, middle-incomewise adding close to 500 hours of work per year between 1979 and 2000.

Mr. Speaker, in my State and I believe all over this country, the American people are physically exhausted. They are stressed out because they are working not one job in many instances, but two jobs, occasionally three jobs. According to statistics from the International Labor Organization, the average American last year worked 1,978 hours, up from 1,942 hours in 1990. That is an increase of almost 1 week of work per year. People are working today in order just to earn enough money to pay the bills, and they are becoming exhausted.

Mr. Speaker, I have talked a little bit about what is going on with the middle class and the conversion of our economy from a growing and strengthened middle class, where we did things like manufacture real goods, to a shrinking middle class, where Wal-Mart is now our major employer, but let me now talk about the people who are not even in the middle class, people who are low income. We have got to ask a question about what is happening to the 11 million Americans who are trying to survive on the pathetic minimum wage of $5.15 an hour which exists here in the Congress.

Now, can one imagine at that time, when the President of the United States and the Republican leadership have provided hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent, there has not been one word of discussion about raising the minimum wage to a living wage? Tax breaks for billionaires, but allow millions of low-income workers to try to make ends meet on $5.15 an hour? What an outrage.

Mr. Speaker, when we look at our national priorities, we have got to recognize the national shame that in America today poverty is increasing, and we have by far the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth. We are a Nation that gives tax breaks to billionaires, but we have 3.5 million people who will experience homelessness in this year, 1.3 million of them children. What kind of priorities is that? What kind of priorities do we establish when millions of senior citizens in America today are unable to afford the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs?

What about veterans, men and women who have put their lives on the line defending this country? Those veterans today, if they walk into a VA hospital or clinic, will more likely than not be placed on a waiting list. Tax breaks for billionaires, but we cannot keep our promises to the veterans of this country, many of whom came back from war wounded in body and wounded in soul, and now this President is attempting to raise premiums for our veterans, attempting to raise the cost of prescription drugs for our veterans. What sense of decency is that? What kind of priorities are that when you say, yeah, if you are a millionaire or a billionaire, we give you a tax break, but if you are a veteran who put your life on the line defending this country, sorry, we just do not have enough money to take care of you?

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the health care crisis in America, obviously it goes well beyond the problems facing our veterans. We have got to be honest and we have got to acknowledge that our health care system today is in a state of crisis, and we have a lot of information on that issue and on prescription drugs on our Web site, which is www.Bernie.house.gov. The reality in terms of health care is that today 43 million Americans have no health insurance at all, and more and more people are underinsured, higher and higher premiums, higher and higher copayments and higher and higher deductibles.

Mr. Speaker, to my mind, the only solution to the growing crisis in health care, the escalating costs, the fact that more and more people are uninsured or underinsured, is for the United States Government to do what every other industrialized country on Earth has done, and that is establish a national health care system which guarantees health care as a right of citizenship to every man, woman and child. It is morally unacceptable that when a worker loses his or her job, that worker can find himself without any health care, and if injury occurs or an accident occurs, that person can go bankrupt paying off the medical bills, see their credit destroyed and, in some cases, never, ever recover financially from those health care bills.

Either health care is a right of all people, or it is not. Either we provide the best health care in the world to the rich, or we say that everybody in America should have health care through a nonprofit, cost- effective, national health care system.

The irony here, Mr. Speaker, is that some people say, well, that is a great idea, good idea, everybody should have health care; we cannot afford it. Wrong. Our system or our nonsystem today is by far the most wasteful and bureaucratic in the entire world. Mr. Speaker, we spend twice as much per person on health care as do the people of any other country on Earth. It is not that we are not spending enough money, it is that this is a system geared toward profit-making for the insurance companies and for the pharmaceutical industry rather than in providing cost-effective quality care to all of our people.

Study after study have shown that if we move toward a single payer national health care program, we can provide good quality health care to every man, woman and child without spending a nickel more than we are currently spending because we are going to get rid of all of the bureaucracy, and all of the bill collectors, and all of the advertising and all of the CEOs making exorbitant salaries. We are going to put health care dollars into health care.

Some people may say, well, Bernie, you know, good idea, but you are way out of touch with the American people; they like the current system. Wrong. Absolutely wrong. A recent ABC poll indicated that 62 percent of our population said that they would favor a system of universal health care financed by the government, paid for by the taxpayers, as opposed to the employer-based system we now have.

The American people want change. They are tired of this irrational, wasteful, bureaucratic health care system which is causing so much pain in America where elderly people cannot even fill the prescriptions their doctors are making, and President Bush's Medicare proposal is not going to help them; where people today are getting sick, and they cannot walk into a doctor's office because they cannot afford the deductible, and some of those people are dying; where doctors now are telling us that the patients they are seeing are far sicker than used to be the case because people just do not have health insurance.

Mr. Speaker, given the very serious problems facing our country, and especially the middle class, it is appropriate, I think, to ask what President Bush and his administration have done to address some of those problems. What are their priorities? What are they doing to increase wages in America, to expand the middle class, to lower poverty, to make sure that all of our Americans get the health care that they need? I found it ironic that when the President gave his State of the Union Address, he had almost nothing to say about health care, almost nothing at all, and the reason is that he is not doing anything on health care, that he is tied to the insurance companies and the drug companies who make huge contributions for his campaign, for the Republican Party, and, in fact, they are not prepared to address the very serious problems facing the middle class of this country.

Not only has the President and the Republican leadership provided hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, people who contribute heavily to their campaigns, they are making it now more difficult for workers to join unions and earn higher wages. They have incredibly pushed an agenda which would deny overtime pay to some 8 million Americans. Now at a time when workers are forced to work longer and longer hours, and many of their income depend on that overtime pay, the President wants to deny some 8 million Americans the overtime pay that they are getting today.

Interestingly enough, we are seeing some bipartisan concern about the rapidly escalating deficit, which this year

will be over $500 billion, and our national debt, which is now at $7 trillion. Some of you may have heard the other day that Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Fed, he has a response to this growing deficit. Greenspan, who supported hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthiest people, who supported the President's tax proposal, which in a decade will cost us $1 trillion, he has a solution to the problem. His solution is let us cut Social Security, let us cut Medicare. In other words, tax breaks for billionaires, run up a deficit, and then you deal with the deficit crisis by cutting back on the cost-of-living increases for our seniors in Social Security and in Medicare and making the retirement age when people receive Social Security later and later. I think that is an outrage.

That is why I have asked the President, who appointed Mr. Greenspan to his position, that is why I have asked the President to fire Mr. Greenspan. You do not support policies which give huge tax breaks to the rich, run up the deficit and then tell the elderly and the sick that they are the ones who will have to balance the budget.

We should be very, very clear that these tax breaks, not only are they, in my view, immoral in terms of providing scant resources to people who do not need them, while we have children sleeping out on the street, but, in fact, what they are doing is leaving a terrible legacy for our children and our grandchildren. Think for a moment about the morality of tax breaks for people who do not need it today and telling our kids and grandchildren that they are going to have to pay off that debt either in higher taxes or in cuts in such programs as education, veterans' needs, affordable housing and many other needs facing the middle class.

But, Mr. Speaker, let me tell you something else. I think that there is more behind this than one would initially think, and I think that there is really an ulterior motivation in driving up this deficit, in driving up the national debt, and I think we heard Mr. Greenspan tell us what it is. If this President drives up the national debt, what we will be hearing in years to come is we cannot afford to retain those government services which protect the middle class, protect the seniors, protect the sick, protect the children, protect low-income people.

In my view, Mr. Speaker, this President is the most extreme, reactionary President in the modern history of this country. And I think that he and his right wing friends want to bring us back to the 19th century, when ordinary people had almost no rights at all. I think behind their driving up the national debt is their desire to cut back and eliminate one program after another which the middle class and working families of this country depend upon.

Greenspan now says, well, let us lower COLA benefits for seniors. Let us raise the retirement age. Ultimately, in my view, and I speak only for myself, I think they want to destroy Social Security completely and privatize it. And then, if they are successful, the day will come where if you are a senior citizen and you do not have a lot of money and you did not invest well, or the stock market goes down, you know what, you do not have anything.

I think they want to privatize Medicare, not just cut back. And if they are successful in doing that, what happens if you are a low-income senior who is quite sick? Do you think there are private insurance companies who are going to provide benefits to you? Why? They cannot make any money out of you.

These people want to eliminate the minimum wage. There are dozens and dozens, if not a majority of Republicans on the floor of the House, and Alan Greenspan, I should add, who not only do not want to raise the minimum wage above $5.15 an hour; they want to abolish the minimum wage. Their belief is that if an employer can get somebody to work for them for $2 an hour, government should not be involved.

There are people who want to weaken environmental standards so that our children have to breathe more and more pollution.

Mr. Speaker, let me conclude my remarks by suggesting that if any of the Members here want more information on any of these issues they can find it on my Web site, bernie.house.gov.

I want to thank my friend from New Jersey for his consistent leadership on an issue that is so important to tens and tens of millions of Americans.

I think the first point to be made and that many American seniors are wondering about is, hey, what is in this benefit for me? Is it good? We hear from the President, we hear from some of our Republican friends that this bill is going to go a long way to solve the problems of seniors paying very, very high prices for their prescription drugs and a whole lot of money out of their own pockets. So let us get the facts straight. Let us put it right out there on the table.

If you spend $500 a year out of pocket, what are you going to pay out of the President's new plan? You are going to pay $733. What? For $500 worth of prescription drugs? Yes, that is the case. Because there is a premium of $35, a deductible of $250 and coinsurance, copayment of 25 percent from the first $251 to $2,250. If you spend $1,000 out of pocket, you are going to pay 85 percent out of your own pocket. If you spend $3,000 a year, you pay 64 percent. If you spend $4,000 a year, you pay 73 percent. Does that sound like a very good deal?

What is even worse, as the gentleman from New Jersey has indicated, because there is no cost containment in this bill, the Consumers Union of America has estimated that one year after the implementation of this legislation,

seniors will be paying more out of their own pockets for prescription drugs than they pay today. Why? Because when there is no cost containment, prescription drug costs will go up 15 percent, 15 percent, 15 percent. Three years from now, prescription drug costs will be 40 or 50 percent higher, nullifying the minimum benefits in this bill.

This is a bad, bad bill providing minimal benefits to our seniors.

I was reminded in the process of how this bill became a law, and the gentleman from New Jersey will remember how when we were kids we went to school and they say this is how a bill becomes a law. I am afraid they are going to have to rewrite those textbooks because let me tell the listeners and my friends how a bill becomes a law in the United States Congress in 2004.

First of all, of course, you have to contribute a whole lot of money to get your voice heard. On June 19, 2002, 2 days after Republicans unveiled their new Medicare bill, surprise, surprise, the pharmaceutical industry staged a fund-raiser for President Bush and the Republican Party in which it raised a record-breaking $30 million in one night. It goes on from there.

It is important for the American people to see how a bill becomes a law.

Number one, if you have an interest and you want a bill to become a law, stage a massive fund-raising event and contribute to the President of the United States. That is step number one. I know it is not in the local textbooks, but that is really how it goes on.

Step number two, ignore the will of the Nation's elected representatives. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that on July 25, 2003, the House of Representatives, and frankly in a bipartisan way, had the courage to stand up to the pharmaceutical industry and the Republican leadership and they passed strong reimportation legislation which says that pharmacists, prescription drug distributors and Americans should be able to purchase safe, affordable, FDA-approved medicine in any one of 26 industrialized countries, thereby lowering the cost of prescription drugs in the United States by 25 to 50 percent.

But if you are serious about making a bill into a law, you have got to ignore that. You ignore what the House did, you ignore the votes that are in the Senate, and you say good-bye to that. But the gentleman from New Jersey just told us what you do. You suddenly put into the bill in conference committee language that says, amazingly, that the United States Government and Medicare cannot negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

That is step number two in how a bill becomes a law in the year 2004 in the Republican Congress.

Step number three, and this is a beauty. I do not think the textbooks in high schools or elementary schools have this one. Ram your bill through even if you do not have the votes.

What does that mean? How do you do that?

On November 22, 2003, at 5:53 a.m., the House Republicans passed their Medicare bill. By all accounts, it was an historic night in the Capitol. Under House rules, as we all know, votes are supposed to last for 17 minutes; and then the Speaker gavels the rollcall to an end. Amazingly enough, that particular vote lasted a record-breaking 3 hours. Three hours. That is part of the process of how a bill becomes a law: Ignore the rules of the House.

That is the third key point. Ignore the rules of the House of Representatives; and if you are losing, do not accept that. Just keep going and 3 hours later twist enough arms so that at 5:53 in the morning, I believe it was, you will get the votes to pass it.

Mr. Speaker, just a few more steps on how a bill becomes law. Step number four is to mislead members of one's own party, of one's own party who have reservations about this bill. There were many honest Republican conservatives who had from their own perspective doubts about the bill. They did not want to spend the kind of money that is going to have to be spent. So what the President says and what the Republican leadership says is this bill over a 10-year period is going to cost $395 billion; they can vote for it, $395 billion. Amazingly enough, 2 months later, 2 months after the President signed the bill into law, he submitted a budget to Congress that put the estimate of that legislation at $530 billion. Only $135 billion off over a 10-year period. It is likely many of us believe, in fact, that that bill will cost a lot more because it does not have any cost containment.

Step number five is to stick to one's story regardless of the facts. In the State of the Union address, the President stated that ``for a monthly premium of about $35, most seniors can expect to see their drug bills cut roughly in half.'' Unfortunately, that claim is simply untrue. The reality is that most seniors will see their drug bills cut by only about one third and maybe even less.

Step number six is to turn one's work on the bill to one's own personal gain. And I think the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) made this point. Here we have the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that wrote this legislation, took the lead in shaping this bill. According to The Washington Post, that gentleman, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin), is expected to take a job from PhRMA, which is the lobby from the pharmaceutical industry, and leave the House of Representatives before his term expires. Another key player, Thomas Scully, the immediate former head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the White House point person on the Medicaid bill, recently left his post to work for a law firm that represents pharmaceutical and other health care interests; and we were told that this bill was really written for the senior citizens of the United States, not for the pharmaceutical industry.

The last and final point in terms of how a bill becomes a law is to use taxpayers' money to ``educate'' the citizens if they are not buying their story. Recently, President Bush has launched a $23 million advertising blitz all at taxpayer expense to tout the Medicare bill. A media firm working for his reelection campaign will get a cut of the pie for buying the air time for the government touting the new Medicare law.

The bottom line here is, I think it is time to rewrite the textbooks in this country about how a bill becomes a law. What we have seen in the last many months, a year, is a shameful process. It is a process of big money buying clout and buying legislation, and it is something that we have got to change immediately.

I yield back to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have my name removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 2169.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend Subcommittee Chairman Istook, Subcommittee Ranking Member Olver, Chairman Young and Ranking Member Obey for including a provision I have been fighting for during the last several years to protect workers negatively impacted by illegal, age discriminatory cash balance pension plans.

Mr. Speaker, as you know, on September 9, 2003, this House overwhelmingly passed by a vote of 258 to 160 an amendment I offered to the Fiscal Year 2004 Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill barring the Treasury Department from helping to overturn the court decision in the Southern District of Illinois brought by IBM employees against IBM's cash balance pension plan.

The Federal court in that case has determined that, as many of us in this House have argued, IBM's cash balance plan and indeed all cash balance plans inherently violate current Federal anti-age discrimination law. By its terms, my amendment barred Treasury from opposing the IBM employees in that case. One of the intended effects of my amendment was also to bar Treasury from finalizing the proposed regulations on cash balance plans--regulations that were improper because they are contrary to the requirements of Federal age discrimination statutes.

On October 23, 2003, the Senate passed a similar amendment by Senator Harkin barring Treasury from finalizing these illegal regulations. These two amendments served as the foundation for the final legislative language which requires the Secretary to submit to the Congress proposed legislation to remedy the harm that these cash balance plans do to older workers. This legislative language also bars the Treasury Department from finalizing its illegal regulations on cash balance pension plans.

Now, I understand that report language has been added that attempts to rewrite the legislative history of this provision by stating that the intent of this legislative language is not to call into question the validity of cash balance plans.

Well, Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the intent of this provision. There is no doubt. This legislative provision is included in the final bill before the House because Members of this body and the other body have grave doubts about the legality of cash balance pension plans.

While this report language in no way dilutes the effect of the legislative ban on Treasury finalizing its cash balance regulations, it is a cynical attempt to hoodwink the courts considering the validity of these cash balance plans into believing that Congress has not spoken on this issue. It was no doubt carefully crafted by lobbyists with the express intent of using it in a legal brief.

Mr. Speaker, the debate on my amendment and Senator Harkin's are clear. None of us in this Chamber are fooled by this non-binding report language and I trust that the esteemed courts of this country will not be either.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, this bill has a number of important and positive provisions. The idea that consumers will receive free credit reports is important. The provision strengthening identity theft is also very important.

But basically, the positive provisions in this bill do not outweigh the negative. And, in my view, this bill should be defeated. It should be defeated because it preempts States throughout this country from going forward with stronger consumer protections. And to my mind, States, in fact, are the laboratories of democracy; and it is a bad idea, especially from our conservative friends, who year after year have told us how bad it was for the Federal Government to have all this power, to now give power to the Federal Government and tell the State of Vermont, the State of California, that if you have specific needs dealing with consumer issues, you may not go forward. That is wrong. And for that reason alone, this legislation should be defeated, sent back, and strengthened in terms of consumer needs.

I would point out that virtually every consumer organization in America, the Consumer Federation of America, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, et cetera, oppose the preemption aspects of this legislation.

Second of all, Mr. Speaker, one of the great rip-offs that is taking place in America now deals with credit cards which, at a time of very, very low interest rates, are charging people up to 25 or 29 percent interest. And one way they do it, Mr. Speaker, is they send out notices and they say, come in and sign up: zero interest rate. What they forget to tell the consumer is that for any reason whatsoever, through a bait- and-switch scam, they can raise interest rates. So 5 years before, you were late on a student loan, you were late on an automobile payment, suddenly, you are going to be paying 15, 20 percent interest, and you do not know it.

This legislation rejected any effort to protect consumers in that way, not only outlawing this bait-and-switch scam, but even preventing strong disclosure. This legislation should be defeated, sent back, and improved.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to focus on some very important issues which impact the middle class of our country, and I do that as the only Independent in the U.S. House of Representatives. And as an Independent, the views that I am going to express are somewhat different than the views of many of my colleagues.

The first point that I want to make is in a sense an obvious point to most people in this country, especially perhaps the 50 or 60 percent of the American people who have given up on the political process and no longer vote, and that is that in Washington, D.C., in the White House and in the United States Congress, money, big money plays an enormous role. There is a reason, and I am going to get into this in greater length in a moment, why we are hemorrhaging decent-paying manufacturing jobs and those jobs are going to China where workers there are paid 50 cents an hour and why corporate America is laying off millions of American workers to take jobs abroad. And one of the reasons that we have a disastrous trade policy is the huge amounts of money that come into Congress, that go into the White House, which have opened up access so that these corporations can go a long way toward destroying decent-paying jobs in America. Money talks. There is a reason why in the United States of America our people pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

I border in Vermont, the State that I represent, Canada, the Canadian Nation. And in Canada people pay in some cases one-fifth, one-third, one-half of the prices that people in the United States pay for the same exact medicine made by the same company. There is a reason for the fact that in the United States we are the only country in the industrialized world that does not in one form or another regulate the drug industry and prevent them from charging Americans any prices they want, and that reason is big money.

The pharmaceutical industry contributes huge amounts of money to Members of Congress. They have lobbyists running all over this place. Several years ago when the President of the United States had a major fund raiser, there was the pharmaceutical industry up there on the dais with him. There is a reason why the United States today is the only Nation in the industrialized world which does not have a national health care program guaranteeing health care to all people, and that reason is money coming into Washington, D.C. from the insurance companies and other people who profit off of a health care system which is disintegrating before our eyes. There is a reason why pollution all over America is rampant, and that has to do with the money that utilities and other large corporations contribute to political parties and to the White House.

Front page, New York Times today: ``Lawyers at EPA Say it will Drop Pollution Cases,'' and the article goes on to point out, of course, that ``Representatives of the utility industry have been among President Bush's biggest campaign donors, and a change in the enforcement policies has been a top priority of the industry's lobbyists.'' In other words, they have now been given permission to pollute because they are major campaign contributors.

There is a reason why this Congress and this President have passed legislation which provides enormous tax breaks for the wealthiest people in our country, hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks that will go to millionaires and billionaires, while at the same time we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world for our children, where we have working people living in their cars because they cannot afford the housing that is available to them. That has everything to do with the money that the wealthy and large corporations contribute into the political process.

Mr. Speaker, the corporate media, which, of course, is owned by big money interests, does not talk about what is happening in our country too much in terms of what is going on in the lives of ordinary people, but in my view, in many respects the United

States is rapidly becoming three separate nations. On one hand we have an increasingly wealthy elite composed of a small number of people with unbelievable wealth and power. That is one group. Small numbers but incredible wealth, incredible power. And then we have the vast majority of the people who are in the middle class, and the middle class in our country today is, as most Americans know, shrinking. The average American today is working longer hours for lower wages than he or she used to. People are going bankrupt at frightening numbers. It is extremely rare when we can see one breadwinner in the family earning enough money to pay the bills in almost every instance in the middle class. Now, two people are needed to work, and sometimes these folks are working unbelievable hours and are becoming stressed out. That is the middle class, shrinking, people working longer hours for lower wages, wondering how they are going to be able to send their kids to college. And at the bottom, at the bottom of the ladder, we have a growing number of Americans who are living in abject poverty, people who are barely able to keep their heads above water, people who are in many instances working for $5.15 an hour, the minimum wage, and those people, after 40 hours of work, 50 hours of work, are falling further behind. They cannot afford to get their cars fixed to get the work. They cannot afford child care for their children, and that is what is happening to our low-income people, and poverty in America, as we all know, is increasing.

What we very rarely hear discussed in the House of Representatives, in the corporate media, is the growing gap between the rich and the poor and the fact that in our country we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income. The fact that there have been rich and poor is not new. That has always gone on. But the disparities in wealth and income that currently exist in our country today have not been seen since the 1920's. In other words, instead of becoming a more egalitarian country, a country in which the middle class is growing, where fewer people are living in poverty, what we are seeing is more and more inequality in terms of the distribution of wealth and income.

Today, Mr. Speaker, the wealthiest 1 percent of the population owns more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. That is right. The richest 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. Some people may think that is okay. Let me be frank. I do not think that that is right, that that is moral, that that is what this country should be about. The CEOs of our largest corporations today earn more than 500 times what their employees are making, 500 times. While workers are being squeezed, being forced to pay more for health insurance, while their pensions are being cut back, the CEOs of large corporations in many instances make out like bandits. And I am not just talking here about the crooks, the dishonest people, the illegal people who ran companies like Enron and WorldCom and Arthur Andersen and those companies. I am not talking about them. I am talking about the highly-respected CEOs like the retired head of General Electric, Jack Welch, who, when he retired in 2000, received $123 million in compensation and $10 million a year in pension benefits for the rest of his life, and he did that after throwing tens and tens of thousands of American workers out on the streets as he moved his plants abroad to China, Mexico, and other countries. Good job, Jack. He is sure worth $123 million now that he has laid off tens of thousands of American workers. I am talking about people like Lou Gerstner of IBM, who, from 1997 to 2002, received $366 million in compensation while slashing the pensions of his employees and the health care benefits of IBM retirees. Right on, Lou. $366 million for him; cuts in pensions and health care benefits for his retirees. A great American. I am talking about C.A. Heimbold Jr., Bristol-Myers Squibb, who received almost $75 million in 2001 while helping to make it impossible for many seniors in this country to purchase prescription drugs because they are priced so high.

Today the Nation's 13,000 wealthiest families who constitute 1/100 of 1 percent of the population receive almost as much income as the bottom 20 million families in the United States. That to my mind is not what America is supposed to be.

New data from the Congressional Budget Office shows that the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of income more than doubled from 1979 to 2000. In other words, we are moving in exactly the wrong direction. The gap is such that the wealthiest 1 percent had more money to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent. The richest 2.8 million Americans had $950 billion after taxes, while the poorest 110 million had less, 14.4 percent.

Mr. Speaker, it is increasingly common to see in my State of Vermont, and all over this Nation, working people working not at one job, not at two jobs in order to pay the bills, but in more instance than we can imagine, working three jobs, working incredible hours, not 40 hours but 50 hours, 60 hours. Is this what the new global economy is all about, seeing men and women all over America working one, two, three jobs with minimal benefits?

When I was growing up, the expectation of being in the middle class, and I know this is a very radical concept that some young people might find difficult to understand, but the concept then before computers, before the explosion of technology, concept of being in the middle class in those days was that one person in a family could work 40 hours a week and earn enough money to pay the bills and take care of his or her family. Imagine what a radical idea that was, one person. The reality now is that we find very few families in the middle class where one person works 40 hours and earns enough money to pay the bills.

In terms of what is happening to the middle-class, we have lost over 3 million jobs in the last 3 years, and, with 9 million workers unemployed, unemployment is over 6 percent. That is a serious problem. But in truth, the unemployment situation is far worse than that, because official unemployment statistics do not include those workers who are no longer actively searching for work. So if you are in a high unemployment area, if there are no jobs and you are not actively working, you are not included. Those figures do not include workers who are working part-time because they cannot find full-time work. Those figures do not include Ph.D.s who are driving cabs and skilled workers who are doing unskilled labor because there are no jobs around that fit their skills. But, nonetheless, we have 9 million people who are unemployed.

Importantly, of the 3 million jobs that we have lost over the last 3 years, 2.7 million were in the manufacturing sector. This is an issue that I want to spend a moment on, because what is happening in our manufacturing sector today is a disaster for this country and bodes very, very poorly for the future of our Nation.

The bottom line is, and Congress must finally recognize this, our trade policies are failing. NAFTA has failed. Our membership in the WTO has failed. Perhaps, above all, permanent normal trade relations with China, PNTR, has failed.

The time is now, and, in fact, it is long overdue, for the United States Congress to stand up to corporate America, to stand up to the President of the United States, to stand up to editorial writers all over America, all of whom have told us, year after year, how great unfettered free trade would be. Well, the evidence is in. They were wrong. They were horrendously wrong.

They told us that unfettered free trade would create new jobs. Instead, we have lost jobs.

They told us that unfettered free trade would improve the standard of living of the middle-class. Instead, real wages have gone down.

Let us be very clear: The decline of manufacturing is one of the reasons why our middle-class is shrinking and why wages for middle- class workers have declined. When we talk about the loss of 3 million jobs in the last 3 years, we should appreciate that 90 percent of those jobs were lost in manufacturing, and, with the loss of manufacturing jobs, we have seen a decline in real inflation-accounted-for wages over the last 30 years.

Today, American workers in the private sector are earning 8 percent less than they were in 1973; 8 percent less. Now, just think about that for a moment. In the last 30 years there has

been a revolution in technology. We all know that. We all know what computers have done, what e-mail has done, what faxes have done, what cell phones and satellite communications have done. We know what robotics in factories have done. In other words, we are a much more productive Nation than we were 30 years ago. Almost every worker is producing more.

Given that reality, that we have new tools that make us more productive, why is it that the average worker in the private sector today is earning 8 percent less than he or she was earning in 1973? This is a major issue that we have got to put up there on the radar screen, and an issue that needs to be discussed all over our country.

Let us be honest about it: Manufacturing in this country today is in a state of collapse. In the last 3 years, we have lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, which comprise 16 percent of the total; 16 percent of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the last 3 years.

In my own small State of Vermont, the third smallest State in the country, we have lost some 8,700 manufacturing jobs between January 2001 and August 2003. And here is the tragedy: When we talk about the loss of manufacturing jobs, we are talking about the loss of decent- paying jobs, often with decent benefits.

In Vermont, for example, on average, someone working in manufacturing makes over $42,000 a year. That is a decent income. When that employee loses his or her job, when that job goes to China, in almost every instance the new job that is acquired by that worker pays less and provides lower benefits.

Mr. Speaker, in 2002, the United States had a $435 billion trade deficit; a $435 billion trade deficit. This year, the trade deficit with China alone, one country, China, is expected to be $120 billion, and that number is projected to go up and up and up in future years.

In recent years we have seen the trade deficit rise from $11.5 billion in 1990 to $49 billion in 1997 to $120 billion this year. And here is what is scary; the National Association of Manufacturers estimates that if present trends continue, our trade deficit with China will go up to $330 billion in 5 years.

Now, our disastrous trade policy is not only costing us millions of decent-paying jobs, it is squeezing wages. It is lowering the wages for the average person. Many employers are making it very clear that if workers do not take cuts in their health care coverage or do not take cuts in wages, that they will move operations to China, to Mexico, or elsewhere.

One of the areas where people are most severely hurt is among the young entry level workers, people without a college education.

Mr. Speaker, for entry level workers without a college level education, the real wages, that is, inflation-accounted-for wages, that they receive have dropped by over 28 percent from 1979 to 1997, which are the latest figures that I have seen. The drop for women during that period was only 18 percent.

How did that happen? Why did that happen? Well, the answer is fairly obvious. Twenty-five years ago, 30 years ago, if you graduated high school you had, as often as not, the opportunity to go to work in manufacturing. You did not get rich, but you were able to make a living, you were able to have decent health care and other benefits.

But with the decline of manufacturing, what job opportunities are now open to young workers who do not have a college degree? Well, everybody knows what is open. They can go to work at McDonald's for the minimum wage, or a little bit more than that, or they can go to work at Wal- Mart. But the sad truth is that those jobs do not pay anything close to a living wage.

What I think can best show what is happening in our economy today is that not so many years ago the largest employer in the United States was General Motors, and workers who work at General Motors today and worked at General Motors 20 years ago earned a living wage with decent benefits.

Today, Mr. Speaker, our largest employer is Wal-Mart. And that is what has happened to the American economy. We have gone from a General Motors economy to a Wal-Mart economy, where people earn low wages and miserable benefits. Today, Wal-Mart employees earn $8.23 per hour, or $13,800 annually, wages which are below the poverty level.

In other words, the largest employer in America, Wal-Mart, now pays workers wages that are below the poverty level. Many of these workers qualify for Federal food stamp programs, which means that Wal-Mart is being directly subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. They pay inadequate wages, workers cannot make it, the Federal Government subsidizes Wal-Mart and allows those workers to get food stamps.

Wal-Mart, as you know, has been sued by 27 States for not paying the overtime pay their workers are entitled to, and, recently, on the front pages of our newspapers, Federal agents raided their headquarters and 60 of their stores across the country, arresting 300 illegal workers in 21 States. That is the largest employer in the United States of America.

That is what the transformation of the American economy is all about. We have gone from an economy where workers used to work producing real products, making middle-class wages with good benefits, to a Wal-Mart economy, where our largest employer now pays workers poverty wages with minimal benefits and has a huge turnover.

Frankly, Mr. Speaker, in hindsight, it did not take a genius to predict that unfettered free trade with China would be a disaster. Many of us have been saying that right here on this floor for years. With educated, hard-working Chinese workers available at 30, 40, 50 cents an hour, and with corporations having the capability of bringing their Chinese-made products back into this country tariff-free, why would American multinational corporations not shut down? Why would they not shut down their plants in this country and move to China? It does not take a genius to figure out that that is what they would do, and that is what they are doing.

Should anyone be surprised that Motorola eliminated 42,000 American jobs in 2001 while investing $3.4 billion in China, or that it plans to invest $10 billion there by 2006?

Who is shocked that General Electric has thrown hundreds of thousands of American workers out on the street in the last 30 years, while investing $1.5 billion in China? From 1978 to 1995, GE eliminated 269,000 jobs in the United States. Meanwhile, of course, its former CEO, Jack Welch, managed to put together an estimated fortune of some $900 million for himself.

Boeing has laid off 135,000 American workers. In the last 30 years, General Motors has shrunk their U.S. workforce by 250,000. IBM, another major corporation, has signed deals to train 100,000 software specialists in China over a 3-year period. Honeywell has built 13 factories in China. Ethan Allen Furniture, which does business in my State, has cut jobs at three sawmills and 17 U.S. manufacturing plants. Nobody, nobody, should be surprised at those developments.

China, for American multinational corporations, is a great place to do business, if by ``doing business'' we mean making products for export back into the United States that companies previously made here. Not only are wages extremely low in China, 30, 40, 50 cents an hour, but if workers attempt to stand up for their rights and they try to form a union, they get arrested. They go to jail.

That is a great place to do business. In the United States we have environmental standards. Factories, plants cannot throw their garbage into the air and into our waterways. Not in China, which is rapidly becoming one of the most polluted countries in the world.

It is a great place to do business: Low wages, people go to jail when they form unions. If people stand up and protest against their former government, they go to jail. Massive pollution. What a wonderful place to go and support the authoritarian government in China.

Mr. Speaker, I want to read a quote, and I think some of our Members and Americans will really be quite surprised by this quote, but I think it needs to be brought out, and it needs to be discussed, because this is what is going on in America today. This is a quote from Jeffrey Immelt, who is the chairman and CEO of General Electric, obviously one of the largest corporations not only in America, but in the world, and this is what he said at an investor meeting on December 6, 2002, a

little less than a year ago. This is the chairman of General Electric: ``When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China, China. You need to be there. You need to change the way people talk about it and how they get there. I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to $5 billion. We are building a tech center in China. Every discussion today has to center on China. The cost basis is extremely attractive. You can take an 18 cubic foot refrigerator, make it in China, land it in the United States, and land it for less than we can make an 18 cubic foot refrigerator today, ourselves.'' Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman, CEO of General Electric.

There it is. This is not an American company; this is a company prepared to sell out every American worker and run to China where they can exploit people there and bring that product back into this country tariff-free. And it is not just General Electric. I quoted GE. I could have quoted a dozen other corporations.

Mr. Speaker, the trade problem with China is now so severe that it is not only a question of companies located in the United States moving to China, but it is companies located in Mexico moving to China. Everyone knows that Mexican wages are a fraction of the wages in the United States, but for many American corporations and international corporations, wages in Mexico are too high, which is why hundreds of factories have shut down there and have gone to China, causing major problems for Mexico. Mexico cannot compete with China, and we signed a trade agreement with them which says that American workers are supposed to compete against the desperate people of that country.

Over the years, advocates of unfettered free trade have tried to gloss over the bad news about the decline in factory employment by promising that a new high-tech economy was in the making. It would be a new economy in which millions of workers, young people, would be able to be sitting in clean offices, working behind their computers, earning $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year. We do not have to worry about those old factory jobs, let them go to China and Mexico, because we have all of these high-tech jobs that are going to pay people really good wages. That is what they told us. Do not worry about blue collar jobs, we have the white collar jobs.

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the advocates of free trade are wrong again. We now know that blue collar manufacturing jobs are not the only casualty of unfettered free trade. Estimates are that some 50,000 to 60,000 high-tech, white collar jobs have been lost in this country in the last 2 years, and that many of them have ended up in India. When Americans argue with the phone company about whether their phone bill is right or wrong, they are not going to be talking to somebody in Boston, New York City or Los Angeles; more often than not, they are going to be talking to somebody in India. That is who we are going to be talking to, more and more. And that whole phenomenon of outsourcing information technology jobs is happening more and more.

According to Forester Research, a major consultant on this issue, they say, ``Over the next 15 years, 3.3 million U.S. service industry jobs and $136 billion in wages will move offshore. The information technology industry will lead the initial overseas exodus.'' That is from Forester Research.

According to Booz Allen Hamilton, companies can lower their costs by as much as 80 percent by shifting tasks such as computer programming, accounting, and procurement to China. That is your job going abroad. Among many other companies moving high-tech jobs abroad is Microsoft, which is spending $750 million over the next 3 years on research and development and outsourcing in China.

Recently, Intel Corporation Chairman Andy Grove warned that the U.S. could lose the bulk of its information technology jobs to overseas competitors in the next decade, largely to India and China.

In other words, Mr. Speaker, not only has unfettered free trade cost us much of our textile industry, our footwear industry, our steel industry, our tool and die industry, our electronics industry, our furniture industry, as well as many, many other industries, it is now going to cost us, unless we change it, millions of high-tech information technology jobs as well.

Mr. Speaker, I want to place into the Record a recent press release from the University of California at Berkeley. Its headline is, ``UC Berkeley Study Assesses Potential Impacts of Second Wave of Outsourcing Jobs From the U.S.,'' and this is the way it begins: ``A ferocious new wave of outsourcing of white collar jobs is sweeping the United States. According to a new study published by the University of California Berkeley, researchers say the trend could leave as many as 14 million service jobs in the United States vulnerable. Study authors, who are both researchers at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics housed at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, say that not all of the jobs are likely to be lost, but they note that jobs remaining in the United States could be subject to pressure to lower wages, and that the jobs that leave may slow the Nation's job growth or generate losses in related activities.

What are those jobs? Well, if you are a telephone operator, watch out. If you deal with health records, if you are a payroll clerk, if you are a legal assistant or a paralegal, if you are an accountant, if you are a financial research analyst, if you work behind a computer, there are folks in India, there are folks in China who can do that job for a fraction of the pay that you are being paid, and your boss is interested in taking that job there.

Now, let me be very clear, Mr. Speaker. The United States needs to have a strong and positive relationship with China. I very much respect the Chinese people, and I am not here attacking China. I am here saying that the President of the United States, corporate America, and the United States Congress have sold out the American worker. China is doing fine. We do not have to criticize them. They are doing very, very well. They just sent a man into space. Their economy is exploding. The problem is not China. The problem is that corporate America, and all of their money, have influenced the United States Congress and the President of the United States. And not just this President, but Mr. Clinton, but Bush the first, but Ronald Reagan before him, into a trade policy which is a disaster.

The bottom line is that American workers should not and cannot be asked to compete against desperate people who make 30 cents or 40 cents an hour. That is wrong.

Now, trade in itself is a good thing. I am not anti-trade. But we need a trade policy, and I know how heretical it is to say this, but we actually need a trade policy that works for America and not just large multinational corporations. We need a trade policy that is fair for the American workers. We want to export our products that are manufactured by American workers, not export the jobs that American workers have. When the New York Yankees are engaged in trade, they do not engage in free trade by which they trade their best ball player for a third- string, minor leaguer, they do not do that. The United States has the most lucrative market in the world, and we are giving it away. Let us engage in trade that works for us, that works for the other side; not engage in trade which is decimating American manufacturing and increasingly, high-tech jobs.

Now is not the time to engage in an accelerated race to the bottom. We should be talking about how wages go up, not down; how poverty is eliminated, not increased. And that is why we need to change our trade policies, and that is why, Mr. Speaker, I have introduced H.R. 3228, which would repeal permanent Normal Trade Relations with China. Let us get it out in the open. Let us not be talking about currency. It is important, but it is not the major issue. The major issue is that our trade agreement with China, permanent normalized trade relations is a disaster. We have to repeal it, and then we can engage in a fair trade agreement with China and with other countries.

I am very happy, Mr. Speaker, to tell my colleagues that since we have introduced that legislation just a few weeks ago, we have garnered 54 cosponsors and it is strongly bipartisan, 14 Republicans are on board that legislation right now, and I appreciate that. We have a tripartisan piece of legislation, and it is something that I know

the American people support. If any person in the House of Representatives or elsewhere wants to learn more about that legislation, we have written it up on our Web site which is www.bernie.house.gov. We have a lot of information there about trade and many other important information about what is going on in Congress.

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the decline of the middle class, when we talk about unemployment going up, wages going down, the loss of decent-paying jobs, we should also talk about what is happening to the quality of life of so many people in our country. We should recognize that the average American today is working incredibly long hours in order to pay the bills. Today, in fact, the average American employee works, by far, the longest hours of any worker in the industrialized world, and that situation is getting worse.

According to statistics from the International Labor Organization, the average American last year worked 1,978 hours, up from 1,942 hours in 1990. That is an increase of almost 1 week of work. Since 1990, the average American is now working an additional week a year.

Now, I see those workers in the State of Vermont and I see them all over the country. They are stressed out. They do not have enough vacation time. They are working day and night just to pay the bills. Again, we want to ask ourselves this simple question: What is going on in our country when we have increased productivity, more technology and, yet, more and more workers earning lower real, inflation-accounted for wages, and they are working incredibly long hours? What is going on in our economy?

The bottom line there is that we have got to begin to create an economy that works for the middle class and not just for the very, very rich. We have to create an economy where people are earning more income so they can work fewer hours, so they have more time to spend in leisure and with their kids and with their families.

I have talked, Mr. Speaker, about what is going on with the middle class. I have talked a little bit about the conversion from a manufacturing society, a General Motors society to a service industry economy, a Wall Street economy. But let us look for a moment at those people who are not even in the middle class. They have not made it into the middle class, those people who are living in poverty. Sadly, Mr. Speaker, while the rich become richer, 1.3 million more Americans became poor and entered poverty just in the last year.

We now have 34.8 million people who now live in poverty. In the midst of those people, Mr. Speaker, and what is happening, people we have got to ask about the 11 million Americans who are trying to survive on the pathetic minimum wage of $5.15 an hour.

And I wonder how it is that in this great institution we can lower taxes for billionaires, but I have not heard one word from the President of the United States about the need to raise the minimum wage above the pathetic level of $5.15 an hour.

Now, how does somebody survive who makes $5.15 an hour or $6 an hour. Does anybody care? Well, I will tell you how some of them do it. After working 40 hours a week, some of these workers, full-time employees, go to sleep, not in their houses, not in their apartments, but in their automobiles because they cannot afford the housing units that are available in their region.

And what, Mr. Speaker, about the 43.6 million Americans who lack any health insurance at all? What happens to those people? That is over 15 percent of our population. And what about the 3\1/2\ million people who will experience homelessness this year, 1.3 million of them children? And what about our elderly citizens who cannot afford their prescription drugs, who shrug their shoulders and nod their heads when doctors write out a prescription because they do not have the money to fill those prescriptions? How many of them die? How many of them see a deterioration in their health?

And what about the veterans, the veterans who have put their lives on the line defending this country and then try to get into a VA hospital that they are entitled to get into but they find out that they have to be placed on a waiting list? They were not placed on a waiting list when they were going off to fight, but now to get the health benefits they are entitled to, they are placed on a waiting list.

And just last year the President of the United States, after giving huge tax breaks to the richest 1 percent, threw over 150,000 veterans off of VA health care. Tax breaks for billionaires, inadequate funding for our veterans.

In the last several years we have seen huge increases in health insurance costs. And with the increase of unemployment, we have seen more and more working people lose their health insurance. And what happens to those people? What happens if you have no health insurance and you have an automobile accident and you end up in the hospital? Well, I tell you what happens. You go bankrupt. And the largest single cause of bankruptcy, personal bankruptcy in this country are for people who cannot pay the medical costs that have been generated because of an accident or an illness.

Mr. Speaker, our health care system today is a disgrace and is in a state of disintegration. More and more people are uninsured and more and more people are underinsured, that is, they have to pay higher and higher copayments, higher and higher deductibles, higher and higher premiums. There are millions of Americans today who have insurance, but who hesitate to go to the doctor when they should be going because they cannot afford the deductible and the copayment. And doctors will tell you that the patients they are seeing today are far sicker than the patients they used to see because people simply cannot afford payments out of their own pocket.

In my mind, the only solution to our health care crisis, the only right thing to do to really address the disintegration of our health care system is to do what every other major industrialized nation on Earth has done, and that is to move toward a national health care system which guarantees health care to every man, woman, and child as a right of citizenship.

The reality of our health care nonsystem is not only that 43 million Americans are uninsured, not only that more and more are underinsured, not only that we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs; but the reality is that this system is the most wasteful and bureaucratic system in the world. Many people do not know this, but in the United States we spends twice as much as the Canadians, three times as much per person as the United Kingdom spends. And those countries provide health care to all of their people.

And study after study shows that if we moved toward a single-pay national health care system, we can guarantee health care to all of our people, quality health care, freedom of choice for the doctor that you want to go to and not spend one penny more than we are currently spending on our disintegrating nonsystem. And, Mr. Speaker, that is what we have got to do. We can no longer tolerate the disgrace of tens of millions of people being uninsured, people going bankrupt because they get ill, people delaying going to the doctor.

In areas of this country dental care is a disaster. Children have rotting teeth in their mouths because there are no dentists who will treat them or dentists available in the area. We need to finally move toward a national health care system and make health care a right of all people.

Now, Mr. Speaker, those are some of the problems facing our country. Poverty is increasing. Middle class is shrinking. Rich are growing richer. Large corporations and their CEOs, while they hide behind the American flag and they tell us how much they love America, they are prepared to throw millions of American workers out on the street and move to an authoritarian China because they can make more money there.

Now, I wish I could say, Mr. Speaker, that the Bush administration is in any rational way responding to these problems. But I think it really would be impossible to say that. Instead of addressing the very serious problems facing our veterans, facing our children, facing public education, facing the fact that middle-class families are finding it harder and harder to send their kids to college, instead of addressing the crisis of the high cost of prescription

drugs, the proudest achievement of the Bush administration is huge tax breaks, 40 percent of which went to the wealthiest 1 percent.

And in the midst of all of this, in the midst of workers working longer hours for lower wages, the decline of manufacturing, the Bush administration, if one can believe it, is now attacking overtime pay for American workers. Can you imagine that? Attacking overtime pay for American workers and trying to undo laws that have been on the books for decades which say that if you work over 40 hours a week you will get time and a half.

I am very proud that a number of Republicans joined many of us Democrats, Independents, on the floor of this House to say that that is wrong and that in fact we were not going to cut back on the overtime pay that workers earn and deserve.

Now, when we talk about the Bush administration, we should also point out a very strange irony. The President considers himself a conservative. That is fine. But, generally speaking, conservatives have told us over and over again, year after year after year, what a terrible thing it is to grow the deficit and grow the national debt because when you do that they have told us, and they were right, you are simply passing on today's problems to our children and our grandchildren. Over and over again I have heard from these podiums right here how terrible it is to grow the deficit. Well, guess what? We now have the largest deficit this year in modern American history and the largest national debt that we have ever had.

In the midst of that and accelerating that deficit and accelerating that national debt are the huge tax breaks that the President and the Republican leadership have given to the wealthy.

Now some people, many conservatives, they say why would a conservative President grow the deficit and grow the national debt. That is not conservative. Let me suggest my view as to why they are doing that. We can all understand that if the wealthy contribute large amounts of money, you are going to give them a tax break. I think that is obscene, but that is nothing new; that is politics. But there is something more cynical going on here. That is, I believe, by driving up the national debt and the deficit, what the President is saying is that we will be so deeply in debt that we have got to tear apart many of the important social programs that have protected tens and tens and millions of Americans.

It is my opinion that in many respects this President wants to undue many of the major gains that were won by working people over the last 100 years and bring us back to the 19th century where workers had no guarantees, and when trouble struck them and their families, they were dependent on charity and the largess of the wealthy.

I think that is one of the reasons why this national debt is going up, so the President and future Presidents will be able to say we can no longer afford to maintain Social Security; let us privatize it. We can no longer afford to protect Medicare; let us privatize it. Let us do away with Medicaid. Let us do away with the Veterans Administration. Let us do away with Pell grants. We cannot afford it. I think what this administration is doing, and this is the most right-wing administration in modern history, is essentially trying to remove all of the protections that the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the young have and were won over the last 100 years. That is what I think is going on, and I think that is a very, very dangerous trend.

Mr. Speaker, let me conclude my remarks by mentioning that this weekend I am going to be going to Madison, Wisconsin, to participate in a major media conference where we expect some 1,500 people from all over the country. I want to congratulate some of the organizers of that conference, Bob McChesney, John Nichols and many others for putting it together. The issue that they are going to be talking about and I will be talking about is the danger that faces our country when a handful of huge media conglomerates increasingly own and control what we see, hear, and read.

On June 2, the FCC by a 3-2 vote voted to make a bad situation worse and to allow even fewer large media conglomerates to control more and more media. That certainly will be one of the many issues that that conference will be dealing with.

I believe it is a very frightening day for democracy when so few large corporations control so much of the flow of information in this country. And if we are not able to overturn that FCC decision, and I and many of us are working hard on that, the day could come in the not- too-distant future where in a community like Burlington, Vermont, you can have one company owning the major television station, the major newspaper, and a number of radio stations. That is one of the rules that was undone; the prevention of that was one of the rules that the FCC just eliminated.

Now the good news is that the United States Senate, the other body, voted for a resolution of disapproval against that by a 55-40 vote. Liberals and conservatives came together, Republicans and Democrats came together and said that is not what media should become in America.

Mr. Speaker, I have a letter which has 205 signatures on it for the Speaker of the House, and it says to the Speaker, let the U.S. House of Representatives have a vote on doing what the other body did. Let us also have the opportunity to vote for a resolution of disapproval regarding the FCC decision. Three million Americans have contacted the FCC, and I think we should listen to those Americans, and I think the Speaker should give us a vote.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to recognize the contributions of Ron Pickering, an individual of great importance to the working people of America, and particularly my state of Vermont. For the past ten years he served with distinction as the President of the Vermont AFL-CIO. Ron was a remarkably effective and dedicated leader of Vermont's most important labor council.

He has also served most capably as the international representative for PACE [the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union], in which capacity he serviced many contracts in New England.

I have known Ron for many years, both as a personal friend and as colleague in the struggle for workers' rights. It is with a sense of deep respect that I say that Ron Pickering reinvigorated the trade union movement in the state of Vermont and laid the groundwork for some of the most important labor victories in the state's history.

Ron has been one of the best and most influential advocates for working people the state of Vermont has ever seen. His effectiveness in the State House in Montpelier has meant that working men and woman have had a voice, and a most eloquent voice, in the deliberations of state government.

Together with his wife Gloria, who has time and again been at his side while he traveled throughout the state of Vermont, Ron Pickering has stood up for the labor movement, for the needs of working Americans, and for the rights of those who put in a hard day's work-- every day--to see that America remains productive and strong.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to share with you the attached letter, which I recently received from the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems in support of my and my colleagues' legislative efforts to enable Americans to access prescription drugs from Canada. I would like this letter included in the Congressional Record.

Vermont Association of

Hospitals and Health Systems,

Montpelier, VT, September 29, 2003

The Honorable Bernard Sanders,

House of Representatives,

Rayburn Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Congressman Sanders: On behalf of the hospitals in

Vermont, I am writing to extend our support for your efforts

to allow for the re-importation of prescription drugs from

Canada. As you well know, access to safe, affordable

medication is an issue for many Americans. In our rural

state, patients of all ages travel to Canada to purchase FDA-

approved, less expensive medications. That option should be

available to all patients seeking more affordable

prescription drug coverage.

Our hospitals are committed to ensuring that our patients

have access to affordable, quality healthcare. We applaud

your efforts and the efforts of your colleagues on this very

important issue.

Sincerely,

Thomas Huebner,

Board Chair.

M. Betrice Grause,

President & CEO.

I thank my friend from Michigan for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation, but I have to say that I think it will not do much good and that I think in many ways it deflects attention from the most important issue, which is not asking the Chinese to make changes in their currency but in fact asking the United States Congress and the President of the United States to make changes in our disastrous trade policies.

The bottom line is that right now in America, manufacturing is in a state of collapse. We have lost almost 3 million manufacturing jobs in the last 3 years. We are seeing our economy move from a General Motors economy to a Wal-Mart economy where workers are now earning poverty wages with minimal

benefits. There are a number of reasons for that, but one of the reasons is that our trade policy with China, with Mexico and other countries has failed. It is time to understand that and it is time to redo that.

The bottom line is that American workers should not and cannot be asked to compete against desperate people in China who work for pennies an hour. Does anyone here think that it makes sense to tell a manufacturing worker in America who earns $16 an hour, who has decent benefits, that he has got to compete against someone in China who makes 30 or 40 cents an hour, who if that person stands up and tries to form a union might get thrown in jail?

Is it fair to ask American manufacturers to compete against companies in China where there are virtually no environmental regulations and in a country which is becoming one of the most polluted countries in the world?

The reality now is that in the midst of a $435 billion overall trade deficit, we have a $120 billion trade deficit with China alone. The National Association of Manufacturers tells us that in the next 5 years that trade deficit could well grow to over $300 billion. Yes, we make exports to China but for every $1 that we export, we import $6.

The reality now is that we are hemorrhaging decent-paying jobs because, to a large degree, of a failed trade policy. The Republican leadership and many Democrats are going to have to own up to it. You have got to come forward and say to the American people, yeah, you think it is great for American workers to compete against people who make 30 cents an hour. You are going to have to tell small American manufacturers who want to do business in this country, who are patriotic, who want to employ American workers, that they are no longer going to have to compete against those companies who sell their products back in this country for a fraction of the price that American manufacturers can produce that product for.

So I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, your idea has some merit, but you are not getting to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is that one of the reasons that we are hemorrhaging decent- paying jobs is because of a failed trade policy, and that is why I have introduced legislation, H.R. 3228, which is winning bipartisan support, which says once and for all let us repeal permanent normal trade relations with China, let us develop a new trade relationship with that country which works not just for the large multinationals but works for the average American workers.

I very well remember the debate, as many of you do, about all of the advantages that PNTR with China would bring. We are going to bring some of those quotes back onto the floor of the House, because they were wrong. All of those people who told us about the jobs that were created were wrong. We are losing jobs. We have got to repeal PNTR with China.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman talks about the advantages of free trade. Does he think American workers can and should compete against people who make 40 cents an hour and go to jail when they try to form a union?

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend very much.

My friend talks about the importance of economic reform in China, and I agree with him. But do you not think we also should be talking about the loss of millions of decent paying jobs?

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, my friend ignores the fact that all of the projections are that the trade deficit with China is going to grow wider and wider, which means more and more job loss in the United States.

I ask my friend, what do you say to your corporate buddies, who throw American workers out on the street, move to China and hire people there, for 30 cents an hour?

Mr. Speaker, if we were to believe the television and radio and even the newspapers, we would think that the most important figures in America are professional athletes, movie stars, rock performers, and financial tycoons.

But we all know that this is not true. There are millions of Americans who do heroic work every day. Some are teachers, some nurses, some work in day care. Some prepare meals for the elderly; others take care of their elderly parents or of spouses or children who are ill or disabled. Men and women all over America go off to work each day, sometimes at two or even three jobs, to make sure that there is food on the table for their families, and money to send their children to college.

Today, I want to recognize five citizens of Vermont who are heroes: Mary Jean Inglee, Emma Katherine Ely, Bev Priest, Theresa Emmons, and Christina Crawford. They come from every corner of Vermont, and each has been tireless in advocating for the needs of the low-income citizens of our state.

Mary Jean Inglee was born in Whitehall, New York and raised in an Irish Catholic Democratic family. She graduated from Whitehall High School, Class of 1968, and married Harold Inglee in November of that same year. She and her husband now live in Rutland; they have two daughters and three granddaughters.

Mary Jean Inglee's interest in low-income issues started when she was a child, when a poor family lived in a shack on the rocky area above her house. To Mary Jean's own family, it was a natural thing to share what they had with that family. Her parents provided them with rides to doctors and food and clothing whenever they could.

Mary Jean at times got in trouble at school because she believed it was her duty to advocate for classmates that were being treated unfairly. She remembers those classmates as the kids who experienced the cruel realities of poverty.

Mary Jean worked in the public school system for 10 years in a special education classroom. She had a first-hand look at how state systems worked--and how they didn't work for kids that had the least going for them. Once again some saw her as a troublemaker, for she took advocacy for families who needed extra consideration, very seriously. She says this kind of work brought her to know BROC (the community action agency in southern Vermont), which was a worksite for some of the students she worked with. Going there on a weekly basis, she was able to observe the difficult situation facing clients and workers.

Mary Jean has worked for the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation for the past 15 years, an agency charged with removing barriers to employment for people with disabilities. Most of the people she works with have no income or the minimal benefits of Supplemental Security Income or Social Security Disability payments. This translates into poverty. She advocates every day for programs, training, and dollars to help people improve their lives.

A new opportunity to help came in 1992 when she was asked to join the BROC Board of Directors as a low-income representative. The timing was perfect for Mary Jean to be called into service. Her husband was ill and not able to work. This gave her an instant ``reminder course'' in what it was like to owe rent and wonder how it would be paid. In their 35 years together, they have been there a few times, but unlike many of the people BROC serves, there was usually someone in the family who could help out.

Mary Jean has worked tirelessly for others, but she has also pursued a path of learning for herself. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Human Services from Springfield College in 2002. She is currently a Masters Candidate and expects to receive her Masters in Human Services with a concentration in Community Psychology in the spring of 2004.

Emma Katherine Ely is another outstanding advocate for low-income people. During the past 15 years (and probably longer than that!) Ms. Ely has served the low-income community of northeastern Vermont. While being a parent in the program--she is the mother of ten children--Ms. Ely served on the Champlain Valley OEO Head Start Policy Council. That interest in parent advocacy led to seats on the New England Regional Head Start Board and also on the Vermont State Head Start Parents Association. For the past 10 years, Ms. Ely has played a central role organizing the Vermont Early Childhood Conference. In addition to this work, Ms. Ely has been active in many roles

at the King Street Youth Center in Burlington. She currently organizes the Holiday Program at that Center.

She represents the needs and interests of the whole community, not just of children. Ms. Ely has also been a member of the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf Advisory Board for the past 14 years. She is currently a low-income representative on the Champlain Valley OEO Board of Directors, and is at the present moment serving in her second term. She does all of these things as a dedicated, spirited advocate.

Bev Priest is another dedicated advocate for low-income people. A resident of Jay, Vermont for over 25 years, she served as a low-income representative on the Northeast Kingdom Community Action Board of Directors for 10 years. During that time, she regularly attended the Low-Income Association meetings, Physically Disabled Association meetings, and other meetings in the state capital of Montpelier: at all of them she unstintingly shared with everyone her knowledge of what she learned.

Bev Priest opened a food shelf and clothing center in the Jay Town Clerk's building and provided many holiday baskets to the local families. During the Christmas season she often played Santa at the low-income children's Christmas parties; she herself acquired many of the gifts that were distributed. She has been a consistent advocate for people in crisis; she has assisted in any way she could in helping people in crisis locate the resources they needed. Bev would many times call the NEKCA office stating, ``If I had transportation I would be on your desk right now.'' As one Vermonter in her community stated, ``Bev promoted the continual awareness of others of the struggles that low- income families face by `pointing out the squeaks in the wheel'.''

Theresa Emmons has been involved with the Central Vermont Community Action Council for over 20 years. It is safe to say that without her influence, CVCAC would not have accomplished as much as it has. Theresa served on the Board of Directors as a representative of the town of Washington in Orange County. She also has the distinction of having the longest tenure on the CVCAC Board, which she has served in every possible way: as President, as Vice President, as Treasurer and as Secretary.

As if this weren't enough, she has also served on the Head Start Policy Council and has been a leader in the Vermont Head Start Parent's Association. She has been a long time volunteer for the USDA Commodity food distribution program and local food shelves; she was also involved in the conception and growth of the Vermont Food Bank. As far as Theresa is concerned, if people are in need they deserve to receive help. If there is a cause that will help someone in need, that cause deserves to be supported--and Theresa is always first in line to volunteer and to recruit others to volunteer.

Christina Crawford of Springfield, Vermont has been an outstanding example of persevering in the face of difficulties, and of triumphing over many of them.

It was seven years ago that Chris left an abusive relationship. She left with a broken foot, no transportation, four children and the clothes on her back. After three months of being homeless, she found a place to live. She studied for the GED and passed. She then began taking administrative classes at the local high school as well as taking on a part-time job at an agency where she was given the opportunity to use the skills she was learning, although the job at the agency was temporary.

At the age of 30 Chris took driving lessons and eventually got her driver's license and a vehicle for the first time in her life. She then went to the Employment & Training agency in search of part-time, entry level work in the clerical field. She was offered an opportunity to enroll in an on-the-job training program and was placed at Southeastern Vermont Community Action. Chris has worked at SEVCA for nearly four years now as receptionist.

Three years ago, one of Chris's children was diagnosed as having an autistic disorder. She has since spent much of her time researching her daughter's disability and working tirelessly to put the needed supports in place for her daughter to be able to attend school. Chris is now in the process of trying to form a local support group for parents of special needs children.

Chris currently represents SEVCA and the southeastern part of Vermont on the Vermont Low Income Advocacy Council. She attended her first meeting in September and looks forward to attending as many as she can to use the opportunity to speak out about the struggles she has overcome and the struggles she has yet to face. She hopes to inspire other low-income people to speak out and create change.

In spite of the heavy load Chris continues to carry, she hopes that one day she will be able to go to college and obtain a degree in Human Services.

Mr. Speaker, the corporate media does not talk about it too much, and we do not discuss it terribly much here in the Congress, but the United States of America is rapidly on its way to becoming three separate nations: An increasingly wealthy elite, a small number of people who have incredible wealth and incredible power; a middle class, the vast majority of our people, which is shrinking, where the average person is working longer hours for lower wages; and, at the bottom we

have a growing number of Americans who are living in abject poverty, barely keeping their heads above water.

Mr. Speaker, there has always been a wealthy elite in this country, that is not new, and there has always been a gap between the rich and the poor. But the disparities in wealth and income that currently exist in this country have not been seen since the 1920s.

In other words, instead of becoming a more egalitarian country, with a stronger middle-class, we are becoming a Nation in which the rich have more wealth and power, the middle-class is shrinking, and poverty is growing.

Mr. Speaker, today the wealthiest 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. One percent own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent. The CEOs of large corporations today earn more than 500 times what their employees are making. While workers are being squeezed, being forced to pay more for health insurance, while their pensions are being cut back, the CEOs of large corporations make out like bandits.

Mr. Speaker, the Nation's 13,000 wealthiest families, which constitute one one-hundredth of one percent of the population, receive almost as much income as the bottom 20 million families in the United States. One one-hundredth of one percent, more income than the bottom 20 million families. That, to my mind, is not what America is supposed to be.

New data from the Congressional Budget Office shows that the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of income more than doubled from 1979 to 2000. In other words, we are moving in exactly the wrong direction. The gap is such that the wealthiest 1 percent had more money to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent. The richest 2.8 million Americans had $950 billion after taxes, or 15.5 percent of the economic pie, while the poorest 110 million had less, 14.4 percent of all after-tax income. Once again, that is not what America is supposed to be. While the rich get richer and receive huge tax breaks from the White House, the middle-class is struggling desperately, in my State of Vermont and all over this country.

It is increasingly common to see people work at not one job, but two jobs, and occasionally three jobs. When I was growing up, the expectation for the middle-class was that one worker in a family could work 40 hours a week and earn enough income to pay the bills. Well, in the State of Vermont, and all over this country, it is becoming increasingly uncommon when that happens. Much more often than not, wives are forced to work alongside husbands in order to bring in the necessary income, and kids, in many instances, do not get the care that they need.

Unemployment in our country is now at a 9-year high. We are over 6 percent, and there are now over 9 million people who are unemployed. But in truth the real number is higher than that, because there are a lot of people who are working part-time because they cannot find full- time jobs, and there are a lot of people who are not part of the statistics because they have given up and are not actively seeking employment.

Mr. Speaker, of the 3.3 million private sector jobs that have been lost over the last 3 years, 2.7 million were in the manufacturing sector. This is an issue I want to spend a moment on, because what is happening in manufacturing today is a disaster for this country and bodes very poorly for the future of our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is, and this Congress must finally recognize it, our trade policies are failing. Permanent, normal trade relations with China has been a disaster. NAFTA has been a disaster. Our membership in the World Trade Organization has not worked for the middle-class and working families, for this country, and the time is long overdue for the United States Congress to stand up to corporate America, to stand up to the President of the United States, to stand up to all of the editorial pages all over America who have told us year after year after year how great unfettered free trade would be.

They were wrong. Their policies have led to enormous economic problems for the middle-class in this country. The decline of manufacturing is one of the reasons why our middle-class is shrinking and why wages for middle-class workers are in decline.

Many people understand the pain involved when we have lost 3 million jobs in the last few years. But we also have got to point out that our trade policies and our overall economic policies have been a disaster for the wages that American workers receive.

Today, American workers in the private sector are earning 8 percent less than they were in 1973. Now, just think for a moment. Think for a moment. In the last 30 years, there has been a revolution in technology. We all know that. We all know what computers have done, what e-mail has done, what faxes have done. We know what robotics in factories have done. In other words, we are a much more productive Nation than we used to be. Every worker is producing more.

Given that reality, why is it that the average worker in the private sector today is earning 8 percent less? That is an issue we have to put right up there on the radar screen, and we need to debate.

Mr. Speaker, manufacturing in this country is currently in a state of collapse. Let us be honest about it. In the last 3 years, we have lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, which comprise 16 percent of the total. That is right. You heard that right. In the last 3 years, we have lost 16 percent of our manufacturing jobs. At 14.7 million, we are at the lowest number of factory jobs since 1958.

In my own State of Vermont, my small State of Vermont, we have lost some 8,700 manufacturing jobs between January 2001 and August 2003, and the pity of that is that in Vermont, manufacturing jobs pay workers middle-class wages. In Vermont, on average, a worker working in manufacturing makes over $42,000 a year. That is a decent wage. We are losing those jobs, and the new jobs that we are creating are paying only a fraction of what manufacturing jobs are paying, and almost always provide much, much weaker benefits.

Mr. Speaker, in 2002 the United States had a $435 billion trade deficit, a $435 billion trade deficit. This year, the trade deficit with China alone, one country, China, is expected to be $120 billion, and that number is projected to increase in future years. It has gone up and up and up. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that if present trends continue, our trade deficit with China will grow to $330 billion in 5 years.

But our disastrous trade policy is not only costing us millions of decent paying jobs; it is squeezing wages. It is squeezing wages. Because many employers are saying if you do not take the cuts in health care, if you do not take the cuts in wages, we are going to move to China, we are going to move to Mexico.

One of the areas where people are being most severely hurt is among young workers without a college education. For entry-level workers without a college level education, the real wages that they have received, that they are now receiving, have dropped by over 20 percent in the last 25 years. And the answer and the reason for that is quite obvious. 25 years ago, 30 years ago if somebody did not go to college, as most people did not, what they would be able to do is go out and get a job in manufacturing. And millions and millions of workers did that. And with those wages and those benefits they were able to lead a middle-class existence and raise their kids with a decent standard of living. But the reality now is that the new jobs that are being created, the jobs at McDonald's and the jobs in Wal-Mart are not paying people a living wage.

What is happening to our economy today is best illustrated by the fact that some 20 years ago our largest employer was General Motors. And workers in General Motors earned, and still earn today, a living wage. Today, Mr. Speaker, our largest private employer is Wal-Mart. And that is what has happened to the American economy. We have gone from a General Motors economy where workers earned decent wages and decent benefits to a Wal-Mart economy where people earn low wages and poor benefits. Today Wal-Mart employees earn $8.23 per hour or $13,861 annually. And that, Mr. Speaker, is an income which is below the poverty level.

And that is what the transformation of the American economy is about, an

economy where workers used to work, produced real products, made middle-class wages, had good benefits, to a Wal-Mart economy where our largest employer now pays workers poverty wages, minimal benefits, huge turn-over.

Frankly, Mr. Speaker, in hindsight it did not take a genius to predict that unfettered free trade with China would be a disaster, which is why I and many other Members in the House have opposed it from the beginning. With educated, hardworking Chinese workers available at 40 or 50 cents an hour, and with corporations having the capability of bringing their Chinese-made products back into this country tariff- free, why would American multinational corporations not shut down their plants in this country and move to China? It did not take a genius, frankly, to think that that would happen.

Should anyone be surprised that Motorola eliminated 42,900 American jobs in 2001 and invested $3.4 billion in China or that IBM has signed deals to train 100,000 software specialists in China over 3 years? Who is shocked that General Electric has thrown tens of thousands of American workers out on the streets while investing $1.5 billion in China. Honeywell is a sophisticated corporation. Should anybody be really surprised that they have built 13 factories in China or that Ethan Allen furniture has cut jobs at three sawmills and 17 U.S. manufacturing plants, including some in my State of Vermont, as they import more medium-priced furniture from China into the United States? Nobody should be surprised at these developments.

China, for American multinational corporations, is a great place to do business, if by ``doing business'' we mean making products for export to the United States that companies previously made here. Not only are wages extremely low in China, but if workers attempt to stand up for their rights in China and form unions, those workers go to jail. Now, what a great place to do business where when workers try to organize, they go to jail. What more could a company ask for?

In China today environmental regulations are almost nonexistent. And while China becomes one of the most polluted countries on Earth, companies that invest in China, they do not have to ``waste money on environmental safeguards.'' In our country we said many years ago to companies you just cannot willy-nilly throw your garbage into our lakes and into our streams. You cannot pollute the air any way you want. You have got to have some environmental safeguards. Those safeguards are expensive. But in China, no problem, you can do whatever you want. Great place to do business.

Mr. Speaker, over the years advocates of unfettered free trade have tried to gloss over the bad news about the decline in factory employment by promising that a new economy was in the making. A new economy was in the making, one in which Americans would be working at good wages in the high-tech field. We have all heard it. Hey, you do not have to worry about them factory jobs anymore. We are the United States of America. We all have new clean, high-tech computer jobs. All of our young people will go out there, make $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year. That is the future for the United States. That is what they told us.

Unfortunately, the advocates of unfettered free trade are wrong again. We now know that blue collar manufacturing jobs are not the only casualty of unfettered free trade. Estimates are that some 50 to 60,000 high-tech white collar jobs have been lost in this country in the last 2 years, and that many of them have ended up in India. If any of the listeners sometimes want to argue with the phone company that your phone bill was wrong, you get on the phone and you are calling up and arguing, well you may end up going not to Chicago or New York or Los Angeles, you may be talking to somebody in India. And that is happening more and more.

According to Forest Research, a major consultant on this issue, they say, and I quote, ``Over the next 15 years 3.3 million U.S. service industry jobs and $136 billion in wages will move offshore. The information technology industry will lead the initial overseas exodus.'' That is from Forest Research. According to Booz Allen Hamilton, companies can lower their costs by as much as 80 percent by shifting tasks such as computer programming, accounting, and procurement to China.

Among many other companies moving high-tech jobs abroad is Microsoft, which is spending $750 million over the next 3 years on research and development and outsourcing in China. Just the other day, just last week, Intel Corporation chairman Andy Grove warned that the U.S. could lose the bulk of its information technology jobs to overseas competitors in the next decade, largely to India and China.

In other words, Mr. Speaker, not only has unfettered free trade cost us our textile industry, cost us our shoe industry, our steel industry, our tool and die industry, our electronic industry, much of our furniture industry, as well as many, many other industries, it is now going to cost us, unless we change it, millions of high-tech jobs as well.

Now, let me be very clear. The United States needs to have a strong and positive relationship with China. I am not anti-Chinese. I am an internationalist. China is the largest country on Earth, and this country must have a good and positive relationship with China; and there are a number of ways that we can do that. But doing that, having a positive relationship with China, does not mean allowing corporate America and their supporters in the White House, in Congress, to destroy the American middle class by making jobs America's number 1 export.

We want our exports to be products manufactured by American workers, not the jobs that American workers have. If we continue to force American workers to, quote unquote, compete against desperate people from China and other developing countries, both in manufacturing and high tech, the United States will be the loser.

By definition a sensible and fair trade agreement works well for both parties, not just for one. Trade is a good thing. Trade is a good thing when both sides benefit. The New York Yankees do not engage in free trade by exchanging their top ball player for a third string minor leaguer.

The United States is the most lucrative market in the world. We need to leverage the value of that market to achieve trade agreements that result in fairness for the American worker. And we can do that. Trade is a good thing. But our current trade policies are not working for American workers.

When we talk about trade with China, Mr. Speaker, we should also understand that today 60 percent, 60 percent of Dell Computer parts are made in China. Boeing recently said that it expected to purchase $1 billion worth of aviation equipment annually in China by 2009 and $1.3 billion by 2010, up from $500 million this year.

North Carolina's Pillowcase Corporation filed for bankruptcy on July 20, 2003, laying off 6,450 of its 7,650 workers and made plans to sell its textile-producing machinery to several nations, including China. Over the past year, Intel has added 1,000 software engineers in China and India. And on and on it goes. The bottom line is that American workers cannot and must not be forced to compete against workers in China who are paid extremely low wages.

Two-thirds of China's 1.3 billion citizens live on less than a dollar a day. The average factory wage in China is 40 cents an hour, \1/40\th of what U.S. factory workers are paid. The average annual salary for an information technology programmer in the U.S. is $75,000; in China it is $8,952.

Mr. Speaker, for all of these reasons and more, I have introduced H.R. 3228, which would repeal permanent normal trade relations with China. My legislation, once again, would repeal permanent normal trade relations with China. It will acknowledge that our current trade policies with that country are a failure. And we have got to begin negotiating trade policies not only with China but with other countries that work well for the American worker and the American middle class.

I am happy to say that in just over 3 weeks, this tripartisan legislation has garnered 52 cosponsors, including 14 Republicans. So we are moving forward in that area, Mr. Speaker, in a tripartisan way.

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the decline of the middle class, we are talking about high unemployment; we are talking about the conversion of the United States from a manufacturing

economy to a service economy whereby wages and benefits are much lower.

We are also talking about the fact that in the United States, workers today are now working the longest hours of the workers in any major country on earth. There should be little wonder why the average American family is so stressed out. And one of the reasons that they are so stressed out is that people are working incredibly long hours in order to make enough money to pay the bills. Today, the average American employee works by far the longest hours of any worker in the industrialized world, and the situation is getting worse.

According to statistics from the International Labor Organization, the average American last year worked 1,978 hours, up from 1,942 hours in 1990. That is an increase of almost one week of work. Since 1990, the average American is now working an additional week a year of work. We are now, as Americans, putting more hours into our work than at any time since the 1920s. Just think about that. Huge increases in productivity and an explosion of technology, logically, would lead one to believe that people would be working fewer hours for higher wages, but the converse is true. People are working longer hours for lower wages.

Americans are now putting in more hours at our work than at any time since the 1920s, 65 years after the formal establishment of the 40-hour workweek under the Fair Labor Standards Act, almost 40 percent of Americans now work more than 50 hours a week; and we should do a lot of thinking about that. An explosion of productivity and technology, people working longer and longer hours; and in almost every instance in the middle class, two bread winners are needed to pay the bills. Real wages for workers in the private sector have declined since 1973. The rich get richer. The middle class shrinks and poverty increases.

Mr. Speaker, I have talked a moment about what is going on with the middle class. I have talked a little bit about the conversion from a manufacturing society, a General Motors society, to a service industry economy, a Wal-Mart economy, but let us look for a moment at the people who are not even in the middle class. People who have not made it into the middle class. People who are at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder in our country, the 34.8 million people in America who live in poverty. Sadly, Mr. Speaker, while the rich get richer, 1.3 million more Americans became poor and entered poverty, the group of poor people in America.

In the midst of those people, Mr. Speaker, we have got to ask about the 11 million Americans who are trying to survive on the pathetic minimum wage of $5.15 an hour which exists here, and I think it is morally repugnant that this Congress voted to provide huge tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, but somehow the President of the United States and the Republican leadership, not for one moment have thought about raising the minimum wage, which today is at a pathetic $5.15 cents an hour.

How do people earning those wages survive? And I will tell you how some of them do it. After working 40 hours a week, they live in their automobiles because they cannot afford housing units in order to survive. They just cannot afford the housing because their wages cannot pay the rent. And what, Mr. Speaker, about the 43.6 million Americans who lack any health insurance? That is 15.2 percent of our population. What about the 3.5 million people who will experience homelessness in this year, 1.3 million of them children? What about our elderly citizens who cannot afford the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs? And the many of them who cut their pills in half or do not even bother trying to fill the prescriptions that their doctors write for them? What about those people? What about the veterans who have put their lives on the line defending this country and then try to get into a VA hospital but find out that they are on a waiting list?

Mr. Speaker, one of the clear crises being faced by the American middle class is the crisis in health care and the cost of prescription drugs. In the last several years, we have seen huge increases in health insurance and with the increase of unemployment, we have seen more and more working people lose their health insurance. In terms of losing health insurance, people then are open to bankruptcy, because if they end up with an accident or a serious illness, they go to the hospital, but they are unable to pay those bills. And the highest amount of people who are bankrupt are the people who cannot pay their health expenses that have been generated as a result of an accident or illness.

Mr. Speaker, our health care system today is in a state of collapse. More and more people are uninsured and more and more people are underinsured. That is, people have higher and higher copayments, higher and higher deductibles, higher and higher premiums. To my mind, the only solution, the only serious solution to our health care crisis is for this country to do what every other major industrialized nation on Earth has done and that is to move toward a national health care system which guarantees health care to every man, woman and child.

A hundred years ago, the United States of America said that every young person, regardless of income, could get a quality public education. Well, the rest of the world has said that every person in their country, regardless of income, is entitled to health care. But we lag behind what countries throughout Europe, Scandinavia and Canada are doing. To my mind, health care is a right, not a privilege. It is wrong that more and more Americans delay and hesitate going to the doctors because they do not have health insurance or because they cannot pay the deductible or the copayments.

When people in America get sick, they have a right to go to the doctor, to go to the hospital and get the health care that they need. The irony with regard to our collapsing health care system is that it is an extremely costly and wasteful system. The fact of the matter is that we spend more than twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation, and yet we end up with 43 million people with no insurance and many more who are underinsured. For the sake of our children, for the sake of our parents, for the sake of the middle class of this country, we have got to adopt a national health care system which finally says with no ifs, ands, or buts about it that in America, all of our people will receive the care that they need as a right of citizenship.

Now, Mr. Speaker, given the very, very serious problems facing the American people and especially our middle class, it is appropriate, I believe, to ask what President Bush and his administration have done to begin addressing some of these problems. What are their priorities? What are they doing to reach out to the middle class and say we are going to expand the middle class; we are going to lower poverty; we are going to improve health care? What are they doing in that direction?

Well, let me tell you a little bit about what they have done. They have given hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the very richest people in our country while cutting back on the basic needs of working families. Now, at a time when the middle class is shrinking, when poverty is increasing, when the number of people without health insurance is going up, when unemployment is far too high, who are the people that the Bush administration are reaching out to? Well, needless to say, it is their campaign contributors and the very wealthiest people in this country who have received hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks.

Through legislative and administration efforts, the Bush administration is making it more and more difficult for workers to form unions and to protect their jobs and incomes. When a worker is a member of a union, by and large that worker will earn 30 percent more than a worker doing a similar job who is nonunion. That is why many workers want to join unions, and yet it is getting harder and harder for workers to do that because the law very clearly sides with the employer and the large corporation and not with the worker.

The Bush administration, if you can believe it, is now attacking overtime for American workers and trying to undo laws that have been on the books for decades which say that if you

worked over 40 hours a week, you will get time and a half. And I am proud that a number of Republicans join many of us on this floor of the House to say that when the middle class is shrinking, when real wages are declining, we are not going to cut back on the overtime pay that workers need.

Now, when we talk about the achievements of the Bush administration, and we understand that our deficit is now at an all-time high, that our national debt is going higher, that in the midst of all of this, our conservative friends who year after year told us how terrible deficits were and what kind of terrible obligations we were leaving to our kids and our grandchildren, well, these are the folks that are driving up the deficit, and they are driving up the national debt. Now, why are they doing that? Why are conservatives doing that?

Well, I think there are two reasons. Number one, obviously, the tax breaks for the rich are not hard to understand. Here in Washington, D.C. there are fund-raising dinners in which individuals have contributed $25,000 a plate, large corporations and their executives make huge contributions and that is payback time. Nothing new. The rich make contributions. They get paid back in tax breaks. They get paid back in corporate welfare. They get paid back with their trade policy which makes it easier for them to throw American workers out on the street and move out to China. That we can understand. That is obscene, but easily understood.

But, Mr. Speaker, let me suggest to you that there is another even more cynical reason for driving up this deficit and driving up the national debt. And I believe that that reason is that as the debt and the deficit become higher and higher, this President, or any other President, may be forced to come before the American people and say our deficit and our debt is so very high that we have no choice but to privatize Social Security, privatize Medicare, privatize Medicaid, privatize public education.

We have got to do it. We have a huge deficit. Oh, yeah, we did give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the rich; but nonetheless, the deficit is so high that we are going to have to do away with all of the benefits, all of the guarantees that the American people have fought for over the last 100 years; and it is my belief that this administration really does want to take us back to the 19th century, where working people and the middle class had no protections whatsoever, where workers and poor people were dependent upon the largess of the wealthy for charity, but there were no guarantees.

Social Security has its problems; and in my view, Social Security must be strengthened. Seniors must be receiving larger COLAs, but the solution to the problems that we may have are not to privatize Social Security and bring us back to the 1920s when elderly people were the poorest segment of our society; but that is the direction that these folks are moving us towards, and they are moving us toward the privatization of Medicare.

Think about how many private insurance companies are really going to provide insurance for elderly, low-income sick people. The function of an insurance company is to make money, not to provide health care; and if a person is old and sick and poor, who is going to insure them? They are on their own.

In terms of prescription drugs, an issue that I have worked very hard on for a number of years, the Bush administration is working hand-in- glove with the pharmaceutical industry, the most powerful lobby here on Capitol Hill. While Americans pay by far the highest prices in the world for their prescription drugs, the pharmaceutical industry year after year after year is the most profitable industry in this country.

In order to maintain their status as the most profitable industry, they have hired over 600, 600 paid lobbyists right here in Washington, D.C., to descend on the Congress, on the House and the Senate, to make sure that we do not pass any legislation which will lower the cost of prescription drugs. Nonetheless, despite all of the hundreds of millions of dollars that they have spent on all of their lobbying efforts, all of their campaign contributions, I am happy to tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that 6 weeks ago, longer than that, the House of Representatives, in a bipartisan way, had the courage to stand up to the pharmaceutical industry and pass legislation that would allow our pharmacists, prescription drug distributors, and individuals to buy FDA-approved medicine in 26 countries including Canada; and if we can get that bill through the Senate, we will be able to lower prescription drug costs in this country by between 30 to 50 percent. Unfortunately, on this issue, we are fighting not only the pharmaceutical industry but the Bush administration and the Bush campaign, which has received substantial support from the drug companies.

Mr. Speaker, on another area that is of enormous importance to the American people and more and more Americans are getting involved in it, the Bush administration is moving in precisely the wrong direction in terms of media consolidation. In my view, one of the crises that we face in our country today is fewer and fewer large media conglomerates own and control what we see, what we hear, and what we read. I know the average person says, well, man, I have got 100 channels on my cable. Check out who owns those 100 channels. Check out who owns NBC, which is General Electric; who owns CBS, which is Viacomm; who owns ABC, which is Disney; who owns Fox Television, which is Rupert Murdoch, an extreme right-wing billionaire. What we are seeing in terms of media is fewer and fewer large corporations controlling the flow of information in America. Clear Channel Radio now owns 1,200 radio stations all over this country.

In America, what our freedom is about is debating different points of view. No one has all the right answers, but we cannot flourish as a democracy unless we hear different points of view; and that is becoming harder and harder to achieve, as fewer and fewer companies own what we see, hear, and read.

Instead of acknowledging that problem and moving us to a more diversified media, where we will have local media reporting on local issues, where it will be different points of view being heard, where there will be more diversity in our media, the Bush administration is moving in exactly the wrong direction.

Michael Powell, who is chairman of the FCC, with the strong backing of the Bush administration, passed with a three to two vote on June 2 more media deregulation, which will allow for even fewer companies to own what we see, hear, and read; and one of the manifestations of that decision, if it is allowed to stand, is there will be cities in America where one company will own the local newspaper, will own the largest television station, will own many of the radio stations, and will own the local cable TV system.

Mr. Speaker, that is not what America is supposed to be; and I am happy to tell my colleagues that all over this country, in a grassroots fashion, millions of Americans have written and communicated to the FCC, some of them conservatives, the National Rifle Association, some right-wing organizations, some of them progressives, some left-wing organizations, some in the middle, different points of view philosophically on almost every issue, but they have come together to say that in America we need to have a diverse ownership of media and different points of view to be heard.

The Senate, listening to the demands of the American people, had the courage in a bipartisan way, Senator Byron Dorgan, Senator Trent Lott helping to lead the effort, had the courage to pass a resolution of disapproval with regard to what the FCC did. In other words, they said we want to junk it. That bill is now here in the House of Representatives; and working with some of my colleagues again in a tripartisan way, we have now garnered 190 signatures on a letter to the Speaker of the House, because the bill is now on the Speaker's desk, and we have said, Mr. Speaker, let the American people have the debate and a vote about whether or not we want more media consolidation. I sincerely hope that the Speaker will allow that debate because if that debate takes place, I believe that the American people will win and that Republicans, Democrats, and Independent on the floor of this House will vote to junk what the FCC has done.

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about America, we often pride ourselves upon being a free country, a free country; and it is easier to stand in front of the American flag and give great speeches about freedom than it is to really fight for freedom, because one of the elements of freedom is to understand, among other things, that not everything, not everything that somebody says or does is something that we agree with, but what freedom is about is tolerating and respecting other points of view, of understanding that people have the right to read whatever they want to read, have the right to an attorney when they need an attorney.

I was one of the relatively few people in the House who voted 6 weeks after the horror of 9/11 against the USA PATRIOT Act, and I voted against the USA PATRIOT Act not because I am not concerned about terrorism. I happen to believe that terrorism is a very serious issue and that the United States Government must do everything that it can to protect the American people and fight terrorism, but I voted against the USA PATRIOT Act because I believe we can fight terrorism without undermining basic constitutional rights, which is what the USA PATRIOT Act is doing.

Again, on this issue, we have seen some very interesting nonideological coming-together. We have seen some really very conservative people who are honest conservatives who say because they do not believe in Big Government they do not want the United States Government monitoring the reading habits of the American people in their libraries or their bookstores. Unfortunately, again, on this issue, the Bush administration and Attorney General John Ashcroft are on the wrong side. They are, in many respects, working to undermine the basic constitutional rights that are given, that have made this country a free country.

So, Mr. Speaker, let me conclude by stating that it is high time that the Congress of the United States begin to focus on the needs of the middle class, the vast majority of our people, the middle class of which is shrinking, the middle class in which the average person is working longer hours and for lower wages. America will grow when the middle class grows; and to do that, we need some fundamental changes in our policies.

We need a national health care system which guarantees health care to all Americans. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. We need to fundamentally change our trade policies so that we do not continue to see the collapse of manufacturing. We need to make sure that every American, regardless of income, has a right to go to college. We need to rescind the tax breaks that have been given to the wealthiest people and the largest corporations and create a tax structure which works for the middle class and not just for the wealthy and the powerful.

There is a lot of work that must be done, and I look forward to participating in that effort.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Unfortunately, I rise in opposition to this legislation. While this bill does include important consumer protection provisions, such as the provision that I and other members of the committee fought for, which would provide free annual credit reports to consumers who request them, and would also allow consumers to receive more information about their credit scores identical to a very good law in the State of California, there are major flaws in this legislation.

For a start, even in terms of that pro-consumer provision, we are not quite sure when that will go into effect, and I fear it will not go into effect as soon as it should.

Secondly, I think the major concern that I and consumer organizations all across this country have is that this legislation would permanently preempt the States from passing stronger consumer protection laws in order to aggressively punish identity thieves and to improve the accuracy of consumers' credit reports.

I may be the conservative on the committee, but it has long been my belief when we are dealing with an issue of protecting consumer rights, we cannot take away the ability of the States to pass stronger consumer protection laws. I find it very ironic from day one of this discussion that conservatives who have told us over and over again how much they dislike the big bad Federal Government stepping on States' rights, in fact have brought that provision into this legislation.

So if the State of Vermont or the State of California or the State of Ohio wants to go further in this area, well, my goodness, that big bad Federal Government, which we have heard so much about, is able to say sorry, you cannot do it. Attorneys general, governors, State legislators, you cannot do that, and I think that is wrong.

During the course of the debate on the committee, there was a very interesting discussion over an amendment that I and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus) brought forth which deals with the issue of what I call credit card switch and bait, and I will be bringing forth an amendment to win support of it. It is not included in this bill, and it should be.

Mr. Chairman, what is going on in this country is that people who pay off their credit card debts on time every single month nonetheless are seeing huge increases in the interest rates that they are paying. How does that happen? It happens because maybe 3 years ago they took out a loan which is still outstanding, or maybe they had an emergency medical bill and they had to borrow money, and arbitrarily the credit card company has determined they are a greater financial risk and their rates can double or triple. I think that is wrong.

This bill has some positive provisions, but we can do much better, and I would urge a ``no'' vote on it.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time.

California may have one-sixth of the Members in this body, Vermont does not. I am it and I rise in strong support of the Waters amendment.

The issue of preemption was hotly debated in the Committee on Financial Services, and on one side of that issue was virtually every consumer organization in America. Groups like the Consumer Federation of America, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Consumers Union, and many others. And some of us in the committee supported these consumer organizations, making the point that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) just made. That in the nature of our government, we are the United States of America, there are 50 States in our country. And sometimes one State does something really good and a whole lot of other States learn from that State. And that is one of the reasons that we have a creative form of government with a lot of ideas that are flowing.

On the other side of that debate, of course, were the credit card companies and the banks. And let us be clear, they do not want strong consumer protection. They are the people who are charging individuals in this country 25 percent interest rates on their credit cards. They do not want to see governors and legislatures and attorneys general stand up strongly and protect consumers. So what ends up happening is that we have a national bill which has admittedly some good provisions in it, but at the same time, it takes away the ability of 50 States to go further.

So the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), and I and many others were fighting for higher Federal standards, more consumer protection, but at the same time, give California the right to go forward.

It is inconvenient. Well, democracy is inconvenient. Alabama does some things. Vermont does some things. We live together. We learn from each other. We argue with each other, but we do not take away, we should not take away the rights of the States to go further. I support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment offered by Congresswoman Waters. This amendment would simply allow the 7 Fair Credit Reporting Act preemptions to expire, as Congress intended, on January 1, 2004 in order to allow the 50 states of this country to pass stronger consumer protection laws to improve the accuracy of credit reports and to aggressively fight identity theft.

I should note right off the bat that every major national consumer group in this country including the Consumer Federation of America, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Consumers Union, and the National Consumer Law Center all vigorously oppose state pre-emption. I would also like to tell you that the National Association of Attorneys General, representing all 50 States of this country, unanimously passed a resolution opposing the 7 FCRA state preemptions.

Mr. Chairman, you know my views on this subject. If my State of Vermont or your State of Ohio wants to pass laws that are stronger than the Federal Government's, we should give States that right. The States are the laboratories of Democracy. You know what happens here. If there is a particular identity theft crisis in Colorado and the Colorado State Legislature passes a law to correct this problem,

and it works, what happens? Pretty soon, California may pass the same law. Then Nebraska. Then Maryland. And, eventually it filters up to the federal government and we have a good national law on the books. But, if this legislation is signed into law, we would permanently prevent the States from taking this action. We hear a lot of talk from conservatives about protecting the States and the American people against the big, bad and instrusive Federal Government. Well, call me a conservative on this issue because I believe that the 50 States in this country should be able to pass their own laws and should not be pre- empted by the Federal Government from passing stronger laws that protect consumers. So, I would say to my conservative friends on the other side of the aisle, vote for my amendment. It is consistent with your philosophy on the role of the government.

And to my Democratic friends on this side of the aisle, I ask all of you to vote for this amendment as well. Let us not forget that just last week, during a recent mark-up of the Securities Fraud Deterrence and Investor Restitution Act (H.R. 2179) in the Capital Markets Subcommittee, virtually every Democrat voted against preempting the states from taking strong enforcement actions against Wall Street firms that defraud investors. I agree. The 50 States of this country should not be prohibited from aggressively punishing corporate wrongdoing.

Today, we are dealing with the exact same issue: state preemption. But, this time it deals with consumer protection. Just like we should not prohibit States from aggressively punishing corporate wrongdoers, to my mind, we should also not permanently bar the states from aggressively punishing identity thieves and improving the accuracy of consumers' credit reports. Therefore, I hope my Democratic friends will vote for this amendment as well.

Mr. Chairman, as we all know, the newspapers are filled with horror stories about the harm being done to consumers by identity thieves. This problem is compounded by the shabby job done by the credit reporting system in ensuring that consumers' credit reports are accurate and up-to-date. States have been at the forefront of the effort to stop identity thieves and to clean up the credit reporting industry. The federal government should be a partner in that effort but should not pull the rug out from under the states. There is no greater impediment to consumer credit than a credit report full of errors. There is no reason to tie the states' hands.

We have heard from the financial services industry and the major credit bureaus that if we don't extend these state preemptions, the entire credit system will collapse. But, let us not forget, we had a national credit system before the 1996 state preemptions were inserted, and it worked well. For example, one of the witnesses that we heard from on this issue from Juniper Bank who supports preemption cited a study that showed ``in 1990, more than 70 percent of credit card balances were being charged more than an 18 percent annual interest rate. By 1993, only 34 percent of credit card balances were being charged more than 18 percent interest.''

Great study. All of the benefits to consumers just happened to be 3 years before the 1996 preemptions were enacted.

Another supporter of state preemption who testified at our first hearing from the Information Policy Institute pointed to another study that showed that credit card prices ``declined by almost 35 percent between the first quarter of 1984, and the fourth quarter of 1996,'' saving consumers ``about $30 billion per year.''

Again, great study. All of the benefits to consumers happended to occur before the 1996 state preemptions were enacted.

In addition, the 1996 FCRA amendments specifically grandfathered stronger consumer protection statutes in California, Massachusetts and Vermont from pre-emption. What have we seen in these 3 states that have stronger consumer protection laws in regards to credit reporting? We have seen that my State of Vermont now has the lowest rate of consumer bankruptcies in this country; the State of Massachusetts has the second lowest consumer bankruptcies in the United States; and California comes in ahead of the median. At a time when the United States as a whole experienced the highest rate of bankruptcy cases in history, increasing by 23 percent since 2000, I would say that these three examples gives us proof that stronger State consumer protection laws work.

What about mortgage rates? Well, the most recent data indicate that the State of California has the lowest effective rate for a conventional mortgage in the nation, and Vermont and Massachusetts were well below the median. Sounds pretty good to me.

In addition, let us not forget why the 1996 FCRA amendments were enacted. While identity theft complaints have been the number one complaint to the FTC each year since 2000, and in fact doubled from 2001 to 2002, it was credit bureau mistakes which were the number one complaint to the FTC 10 years earlier. And it was credit bureau mistakes, and complaints about them, that led Congress to the 1996 FCRA amendments. From 1990-92, according to a study by U.S. PIRG, mistakes in credit reports were the number one complaint to the FTC. What will the new crisis be? We don't know for sure. But, if we permanently preempt the States from acting on future problems, we will do this country a great disservice.

Moreover, if some of the new members don't believe Congress intended these preemptions to sunset, I would refer them to the floor statement of the former Ranking Member of the Banking Committee and former Republican Congressman from California Al McCandless who had this to say during the floor debate on this bill:

``The issue over whether the Fair Credit Reporting Act should preempt more stringent State laws or whether it should permit States to enact tougher credit reporting statutes has been one of the single toughest issues for the Banking Committee to tackle. On the one hand, many of our Members like the idea of a national uniform standard. On the other, we do not want to tie the hands of State legislatures. I think that this compromise bill resolves the issue of preemption to most everyone's satisfaction. The Fair Credit Reporting Act as amended by this compromise bill, will be the law of the land for the next 8 years. It will provide consumers across the country with greater protection than is currently offered by any existing State statute. A uniform national standard will make compliance more straightforward and will facilitate the extension of credit to consumers. States will be able to enact more stringent legislation if necessary after 8 years.''

Let me repeat, ``States will be able to enact more stringent legislation if necessary after 8 years.''

That's what was said by the top Republican on the Banking Committee on the floor of the House when a compromise was reached on this bill. Let's stick to that compromise and support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is cosponsored by the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee). It is also strongly supported by the Consumer Federation of America, the Consumers Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Consumer Law Center, the New York Public Interest Research Group, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the Privacy Times, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. In other words, almost every major consumer organization in America is supporting this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment deals with an issue which is of growing concern to millions of credit card holders, and that is that, increasingly, credit card companies are engaging in an outrageous bait and switch practice which is costing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars.

This, Mr. Chairman, is how the scam works: In our country today, credit card companies are sending out over 5 billion solicitations a year. Yes, that is right, 5 billion pieces of mail are being sent to Americans every year in order to purchase this or that credit card. Sometimes I think about half of those solicitations come to my kids. Nonetheless, we are all receiving them. As we all know, these mailings very often have bold headlines stating zero percent interests rates for 6 months, or 2.5 percent interest rates for a year, or whatever. We all receive them.

Now, here, Mr. Chairman, is the scam and the bait and the switch. An individual fills out the form and purchases the credit card, and month after month after month, he or she pays the amount owed to the credit card company faithfully and on time. In other words, the individual consumer has fulfilled his or her end of the contract. But in the midst of this, something strange happens. People are paying up on time, but suddenly the interest rate skyrockets, despite the individual making their payment on time.

Now, how can this happen? How can interest rates double or triple when the individual has fulfilled the obligations of the credit card company and made payments on time and never has gone over the credit card limit?

Well, it happens because the credit card issuers, companies like Chase Manhattan, Citigroup or Bank One, have decided all on their own that the consumer has become a greater financial risk, even when that consumer has in every instance paid their credit card bill on time.

What happens is the company obtains information from their customer's credit report which indicates a late payment on another financial transaction, another transaction. Perhaps the consumer might have been late in paying a student loan or a mortgage payment or a medical bill, and because the individual was late paying off another financial transaction, having nothing to do with the credit card they have from this company, the credit card company raises interest rates on their transaction with that individual.

Even more outrageous, credit card companies are raising interest rates when the consumer has never been late on any payment, and here is the crime there: There is an illness in the family. Somebody borrows money to pay off a medical bill; and, because they have committed that terrible crime of borrowing money for a medical reason, interest rates will go on the credit card, although they have never been late on any payment.

That is absurd, that is unfair, and that is a rip-off of the American people. At a time when the Federal Reserve has lowered short-term interest rates 13 times, why do we have consumers in this country paying 16 percent, 26 percent, even 29 percent APR on their credit cards?

Furthermore, Mr. Chairman, the Committee on Financial Services and my Subcommittee of Financial Institutions, of which I am the ranking member on, have heard from a number of witnesses about the inaccuracies of credit reports. According to freecreditinsight.com, over 70 percent of credit reports contain errors, so the credit reporting agency makes a mistake and your interest rates go zooming up.

By charging higher interest rates, the profits of credit card companies skyrocket and consumers grow deeper and deeper into debt. Is it any wonder why bankruptcies in the U.S. are now at an all time high, increasing by 23 percent since 2000?

Mr. Chairman, this is the issue. This is a very simple issue. It is an issue of fairness. If I take out a credit card and the credit card company says to me you have to pay up at a certain time and your interest rates are such-and-such, and I do that every single month, that is what the deal should be. And, if I am late, if I go above the amount of credit that I agreed to, well, I agree, they have a right to penalize me. They do not have a right to double or triple my interest rates when I pay my bills on time and because I took out a loan because my wife might have been ill.

Mr. Chairman, Congress has a responsibility to stop the credit card industry from ripping off consumers by this deceptive and unfair practice. I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment to restrict the credit card interest rate bait and switch.

Specifically, this amendment would prohibit credit card issuers from using negative information contained in their customers' credit reports, such as a late payment on a student loan, a lower credit score, a new mortgage or new loan to pay for medical emergency or an error in a credit report, as a reason to double or triple credit card interests rates.

Importantly, as part of a compromise worked out at the committee level, this amendment has been crafted so that if a consumer is at least 60 days delinquent on any other credit card or debt, the credit card company could still use that information to increase the interest rates of their customers.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, my friend from Ohio just said why should people who pay their bill on time every month be penalized? I agree with him. But as the gentleman knows, right now people pay their bills on time every single month and, despite that, they can see a doubling or tripling of their interest rates, and that is precisely what we are trying to prevent.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), the famous author of the Maloney amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The sides on this debate are very clear. One side are the credit card companies and the very large banks who are making huge profits from their consumers and, in some cases in our low-interest moment, right now, who are charging 25 or 29 percent a year interest rates. In other words, they are ripping off the American people.

On the other side of this debate and supporting this amendment, are virtually every major consumer organization in America that is saying enough is enough. If people pay their bills on time every month, they should not see their interest rates double or triple. The chairman mentioned that there was bipartisan opposition to my amendment. He was right. But as he knows, there was bipartisan support for this amendment, including the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus), who was very articulate and supportive of this amendment as chairman of the relevant subcommittee.

Let me simply conclude by saying this: the American people are sick and tired of being ripped off by credit card companies. When they pay their bills every month on time, they should not see their interest rates soar. I would urge the Members of this body, in a bipartisan way, to support the American consumer and pass the Sanders amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this tripartisan amendment is cosponsored by the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) who is the ranking member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht). This amendment also has the strong support of the AARP, the largest senior citizen group in this country representing over 35 million Americans, it has the support of the Pension Right Centers, and the IBM Employees Benefit Action Coalition.

This amendment is simple and straightforward. Five weeks ago, the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Illinois ruled that IBM's cash balance pension conversion violates Federal age discrimination law. The conversion, Judge Murphy found, violated the age discrimination provisions of ERISA because it discriminates against older workers.

This court decision confirms what millions of American workers have been saying for years and what hundreds of Members of Congress have also gone on record as stating. Conversions to cash balance pension plans discriminate against older workers, are illegal and must not be allowed to happen. This amendment would simply prevent the Federal Government from using any funding to assist in overturning the Federal district court ruling. That is what this amendment does.

By passing this amendment, we would not only be upholding the law, which is the least we can do, but we will also be standing with millions of workers who have lost, and are in danger of losing, 20, 30, 40, 50 percent of the pensions that they have been promised by their employers.

Mr. Chairman, why did Judge Murphy rule against the company and decide in favor of IBM employees? Let me just read a brief excerpt of what he wrote:

``In 1999, IBM opted for a `cash balance formula.' The plan's actuaries projected that this would produce annual savings of almost $500 million by 2009. These savings would result from reductions of up to 47 percent in future benefits that would be earned by older IBM employees. The 1999 cash balance formula violates the literal terms of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, that is, ERISA. IBM's own age discrimination analysis illustrates the problem.'' That is from Judge Murphy.

Mr. Chairman, I became involved in this issue several years ago when many hundreds of IBM employees in Vermont contacted my office and told me that the pensions they had been promised by the company had been cut by 30 to 50 percent. Imagine that. Workers staying at a company through good times and bad times, providing loyalty to their employers, and then one day the company sends out a message which says, in so many words, thank you for your years of dedicated service, but forget about the promises that we made to you regarding the retirement that you and your family were anticipating. Thank you very much, but we've changed our minds, we've pulled the rug out from underneath you, we're cutting your pensions by up to 50 percent.

Yes, IBM had enough money to pay out a $260 million compensation package to former CEO Lou Gerstner, $260 million to one man, but they just could not keep their word to their long-term, dedicated employees. And, of course, it is not just IBM that we are talking about today. It is hundreds of companies that have done exactly the same thing. It is companies that have broken the law, discriminated against older American workers and slashed the pensions that those workers were promised.

Mr. Chairman, it is no secret that the middle class in this country is hurting. Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. Their health benefits are being cut. Corporate America has thrown millions of American workers out on the street as they move our manufacturing sector to China, to Mexico and anyplace that they can find where they hire people for pennies an hour. Meanwhile, in many instances, the CEOs of these very same companies make out like bandits.

Mr. Chairman, a segment of corporate America have destroyed American jobs, destroyed health care benefits and now they want to destroy the pension benefits that were promised to their workers. We must not allow that to happen. Even corporate America, even major campaign contributors, even folks who can spend huge sums of money by placing full-page ads in the New York Times and elsewhere, even those people have got to obey the law. That is what this amendment is about. It is about obeying the law and not engaging in actions that violate Federal age discrimination statutes. In our country, we have come a long way by ending discrimination based on race, gender and disabilities. And today we have got to make it crystal clear that we will not allow discrimination against older American workers. We will not allow the Treasury Department to use taxpayer dollars to support age discrimination.

Mr. Chairman, let us not forget that companies with defined benefit pension plans receive $89 billion a year in tax breaks to set up pension plans for their workers. Out of all of the tax breaks that companies in America receive, the tax break for pension plans is far and away the most generous. Congress and the Federal Government should not be providing taxpayer dollars for companies to commit age discrimination against its workers.

Mr. Chairman, it is very important for the House to support this amendment today. It is important, Mr. Chairman, because despite the fact that cash balance conversions have been found to be illegal in the courts, the Treasury Department is still pushing proposed regulations that, if enacted, would give the green light to these very same cash balance pension plans that the Federal court has ruled are illegal. Clearly, the Treasury Department is intent on pushing these illegal conversions by all means at its disposal, and we must not allow that to happen.

Mr. Chairman, just last year, over 300 Members of the House voted to require the Treasury Department to protect older workers in cash balance pension conversions. I thank all of them for their support for older American workers. In addition, over 200 Members of Congress recently wrote a letter to urge President Bush to withdraw the proposed cash balance regulations that are at issue here. Today we have the opportunity to once again show our support for American workers and oppose a plan which is unfair, immoral and illegal. I urge strong support for this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me just tell my colleagues how I came into this issue in the State of Vermont. I came into this issue when, several years ago, my phone lines bounced off the hook because large numbers of workers at the Vermont IBM plant in Essex Junction, Vermont, suddenly learned for the first time that the pensions that had been promised to them were going to be cut substantially and in some cases by up to 50 percent.

I became involved with these workers who stood up and said to the company, you made us a promise and when times were bad, we stayed with you, we didn't go someplace else. One of the reasons that we stayed with you is because you

had promised us a certain pension that we were basing our family retirement on. That is the promise that had been made. What these workers did is stood up, talked to their fellow IBM workers all over America and they fought back and they won some partial benefits as IBM made some rescissions in what they did, but they continued the fight. What they have said, and workers all over America have said, is we cannot discriminate against workers simply because they are old and move to cash balance.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), who has played a very active role in this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), who has been a very active leader on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht).

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Sanders

Amendment No. 4: Page 69, after line 5, insert the

following new section (and conform the table of contents

accordingly):