Floor Statements

Mr. President, I wish to make a brief statement about the person who is destined to become the new Secretary of Energy, someone for whom I voted in the Energy Committee this morning and someone I am very pleased to support and think brings considerable skill to the position of Secretary of Energy. He has not yet been confirmed by the full Senate, but he was approved unanimously by the Energy Committee this morning.

I commend President Bush for his selection. We have had some controversial nominees, but the selection of Dr. Bodman is the selection of someone whose capabilities, skills, and experience I believe lend themselves very well to the demand and the duties of Secretary of Energy. At this time, when we have these compelling energy issues, the President has made a good choice.

Mr. Bodman is a person of considerable skill and talent who I am going to be proud to support, and who I voted for in the Energy Committee this morning.

When I talk about trade, as I did yesterday, one of the significant issues of trade and economic opportunity in the future for this country is the issue of oil and energy. We are now importing nearly 60 percent of our oil. Everyone talks about independence and trying to be free from the grip of those who live in troubled parts of the world. Yet we allow these countries to hold us hostage to the supply that comes from their oil pipeline.

Every 25 years we grow concerned and start worrying about energy. We all put on our suit and start debating energy. In the end it is a bunch of people in dark suits that huff and puff and do nothing. And every 25 years we develop a ``new'' strategy that is exactly the same, dig and drill.

This strategy is what I like to call a yesterday forever policy. Yes, we should dig. And yes, we should drill. But if this is all we have for an energy policy, it is yesterday forever, and 25 years from now we will be back here talking about it again--perhaps a different bunch of Senators--but we will talk about the same thing.

The question is, Can we do something different? I have often told my colleagues that my first automobile when I was in school was a 1924 Model T Ford that I restored. I bought it for $25. I lovingly restored it over 2 years. It was not much of a car. You could not date in it and it was not much of a car for someone in high school. The thing about it is that you put gasoline in a 1924 Ford exactly the same way you put gasoline in a 2005 Ford. You drive up to a pump and stick a hose in the tank and start pumping. Nothing has changed. Everything in our lives has changed, but nothing has changed with respect to the way we put gasoline through a carburetor. This country is so overwhelmingly dependent on oil from troubled parts of the world that if we do not get vocal and do something significant, shame on us.

In 2003, the President called for developing hydrogen fuel cells. I said at the time, I welcomed that and thought it was a terrific idea, although it was more timid than what I proposed. I proposed a $6.5 billion, 10-year Apollo-type program that would move us to a position where we are no longer putting gasoline through carburetors and depending on foreign oil. And I still believe we should move to a hydrogen fuel cell future.

The fact is, there are enormous benefits if we create a hydrogen fuel cell program. First, hydrogen is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. I understand there are concerns regarding production, storage, distribution, and infrastructure. I understand that, but these concerns are not insurmountable and hydrogen is everywhere.

When you drive a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, what comes out of the tailpipe? Water vapor. It is a wonderful thing for the environment to drive a

vehicle that puts water vapor out the tailpipe.

If we can decide as a country that our policy should be that our children or their children no longer drive vehicles with an internal combustion engine that requires us to get oil from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, or Venezuela, we will have done something very significant for the defense of this country.

This is about national security. We cannot be timid. And we cannot take baby steps towards an energy policy.

When we develop an energy bill--and I am on the Senate Energy Committee and I want to be part of developing that bill; I voted for the last one in the Senate; it was very controversial but I voted for it--it needs to be a bill that includes four pieces.

First, we have to incentivize additional production. Yes, it is digging and drilling, but if that is the only title, it is over. We do not accomplish much at all. Second, we need much more conservation. We waste so much more energy than we should. It is incredible how much energy we waste. We need conservation. Production, conservation. Third, we need efficiency. Everything we do, from turning on the bathroom light in the morning to using the electric shaver we plug in, can be so much more efficient and could save a substantial amount of energy. Fourth, we need renewable forms of energy. Yes, that is wind energy, solar, biodiesel, and ethanol.

Collectively, we need to create a significant national program, an Apollo-like program, where our Nation exerts its will and says: Here is where we are headed and here is how we will get there. It has to be a collective national will for us to decide we will escape the excessive dependence we have on Middle East oil. That is the only way we will achieve this goal.

I know it is longer term. But, if we do not take the first step, we can never get there. When we write a new energy proposal, I will again--and I have visited with Dr. Bodman about this--I will work with my colleagues and propose a very aggressive Apollo-type or Manhattan- type program that says, let's head this country in a new direction with a fresh choice, a different choice that makes us less dependent on the oil that comes from the ground in the Middle East.

We have no choice but to consider an energy bill a priority, a new energy policy a priority. We need to get it right. There are enough ideas to go around. I don't think any one party or any one philosophy has a lock on good suggestions or ideas with respect to a new energy bill. I do believe this, those who cling to the past and those who believe digging and drilling represents America's energy future do no service to our kids and grandkids.

As we grapple with this issue, and with the help and leadership of Dr. Bodman at the Department of Energy when he is confirmed next week, my hope is we can do something significant and at the end of our careers we can say we produced a significant new and interesting energy policy that takes this country well beyond the dependence that now holds us hostage.

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

Mr. President, today I am joined by Senator Mikulski of Maryland and seven of our colleagues in introducing legislation to repeal one of the most egregious tax subsidies found in the U.S. Tax Code. Believe it or not, U.S. companies that move their manufacturing plants and good-paying jobs overseas will be rewarded with billions of dollars in tax breaks over the next 10 years. Unfortunately for both American workers and American taxpayers, this is absolutely true. Our bill will repeal this wrong-headed fiscal policy that has worked against the interest of American manufacturers for so many years.

Let me describe how this perverse tax subsidy works. Imagine two competing U.S. companies manufacturing a product for sale in this country. Company A has a plant with American workers. It sells its product here at home, immediately paying U.S. taxes on its profits. Company B, however, decides to shut down its U.S. plant, fire its American workers and build a new plant in a foreign country because it can produce the same goods at lower cost there, using underpaid foreign workers. Moreover, Company B pays almost no taxes in the foreign country and no taxes currently in the United States because it is entitled to tax ``deferral'' under our income tax laws. The Federal Tax Code allows firms like Company B to defer paying any U.S. income taxes on the earnings from those now foreign-manufactured products until those profits are returned, if ever, to this country.

In other words, when United States companies close down a manufacturing plant such as Huffy bicycles or Radio Flyer little red wagons, fire their American workers and move those good-paying jobs to countries like China, United States tax law actually gives these companies a large tax break. This tax break is not available to American companies that make the very same products here on American soil. So the U.S. company that decides to stay at home suffers a competitive disadvantage, a disadvantage that our tax laws have helped to create.

The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation says that this tax ``deferral'' loophole will dole out some $6.5 billion in tax breaks over the next decade to U.S. manufacturing companies that pack up their operations and relocate abroad. This tax loophole likely contributed to a loss of some 2.7 million U.S. manufacturing jobs since 2000 and encouraged the creation of over 1 million new jobs in the foreign manufacturing affiliates of U.S companies since 1993.

Last May, Senator Mikulski and I offered an amendment on the Senate floor to try to shut down this perverse $6.5 billion tax break. Our effort was supported by a number of organizations concerned about the loss of good-paying U.S. manufacturing jobs, including the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America--UAW; the AFL-CIO; the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers; the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Workers, UNITE.

Regrettably, our amendment failed to get the votes it needed to pass. The powerful lobby for large multinational firms was able to keep this tax loophole fully intact. But I intend to offer this proposal again and again until this tax subsidy is finally repealed.

Frankly, I strongly disagree with the majority in the Senate that voted to retain this ill-conceived tax break, which hurts American businesses and workers. By their vote, our opponents essentially said let's continue to give enormous tax breaks that encourage U.S. companies to move their operations overseas and contributes to the dislocation of thousands of American workers.

The bill we are introducing today, like last year's amendment, is carefully targeted. It applies only to U.S. firms that move production overseas to low-tax countries and then turn around and import those products for sale here in the United States. Repealing this U.S. jobs export tax subsidy will not hurt the ability of U.S. firms to compete against foreign competitors in foreign markets.

In the final analysis, the approach taken in our legislation is measured and long overdue. As we work in Congress to reform the tax system in the coming year and shut down a number of arcane tax loopholes, this one should be at the top of the list. I urge you to cosponsor this bill.

Mr. President, today I am joined by Senator Mikulski of Maryland and seven of our colleagues in introducing legislation to repeal one of the most egregious tax subsidies found in the U.S. Tax Code. Believe it or not, U.S. companies that move their manufacturing plants and good-paying jobs overseas will be rewarded with billions of dollars in tax breaks over the next 10 years. Unfortunately for both American workers and American taxpayers, this is absolutely true. Our bill will repeal this wrong-headed fiscal policy that has worked against the interest of American manufacturers for so many years.

Let me describe how this perverse tax subsidy works. Imagine two competing U.S. companies manufacturing a product for sale in this country. Company A has a plant with American workers. It sells its product here at home, immediately paying U.S. taxes on its profits. Company B, however, decides to shut down its U.S. plant, fire its American workers and build a new plant in a foreign country because it can produce the same goods at lower cost there, using underpaid foreign workers. Moreover, Company B pays almost no taxes in the foreign country and no taxes currently in the United States because it is entitled to tax ``deferral'' under our income tax laws. The Federal Tax Code allows firms like Company B to defer paying any U.S. income taxes on the earnings from those now foreign-manufactured products until those profits are returned, if ever, to this country.

In other words, when United States companies close down a manufacturing plant such as Huffy bicycles or Radio Flyer little red wagons, fire their American workers and move those good-paying jobs to countries like China, United States tax law actually gives these companies a large tax break. This tax break is not available to American companies that make the very same products here on American soil. So the U.S. company that decides to stay at home suffers a competitive disadvantage, a disadvantage that our tax laws have helped to create.

The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation says that this tax ``deferral'' loophole will dole out some $6.5 billion in tax breaks over the next decade to U.S. manufacturing companies that pack up their operations and relocate abroad. This tax loophole likely contributed to a loss of some 2.7 million U.S. manufacturing jobs since 2000 and encouraged the creation of over 1 million new jobs in the foreign manufacturing affiliates of U.S companies since 1993.

Last May, Senator Mikulski and I offered an amendment on the Senate floor to try to shut down this perverse $6.5 billion tax break. Our effort was supported by a number of organizations concerned about the loss of good-paying U.S. manufacturing jobs, including the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America--UAW; the AFL-CIO; the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers; the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Workers, UNITE.

Regrettably, our amendment failed to get the votes it needed to pass. The powerful lobby for large multinational firms was able to keep this tax loophole fully intact. But I intend to offer this proposal again and again until this tax subsidy is finally repealed.

Frankly, I strongly disagree with the majority in the Senate that voted to retain this ill-conceived tax break, which hurts American businesses and workers. By their vote, our opponents essentially said let's continue to give enormous tax breaks that encourage U.S. companies to move their operations overseas and contributes to the dislocation of thousands of American workers.

The bill we are introducing today, like last year's amendment, is carefully targeted. It applies only to U.S. firms that move production overseas to low-tax countries and then turn around and import those products for sale here in the United States. Repealing this U.S. jobs export tax subsidy will not hurt the ability of U.S. firms to compete against foreign competitors in foreign markets.

In the final analysis, the approach taken in our legislation is measured and long overdue. As we work in Congress to reform the tax system in the coming year and shut down a number of arcane tax loopholes, this one should be at the top of the list. I urge you to cosponsor this bill.

Mr. President, it is my intention to support the nomination of Mr. Gutierrez to be the Secretary of Commerce, an important position in this administration and for our country's economic well-being. However, before I do, I want to call the attention of the Senate to some important issues.

I come to the floor to speak at some length about a very serious problem: the burgeoning U.S. trade deficit. This is a deficit that fundamentally weakens this country, a trade deficit that last month alone was $60 billion, a trade deficit that will be something over $600 billion for the year 2004, when we finally get the year-end numbers. Despite this growing crisis in international trade, the Congress, the President, and virtually all of the official Government, seems to be willing to snore through all of this and pretend it does not exist.

I think it is fitting that we discuss this at some length at a time when we are putting a new Commerce Secretary in place.

Before I do that, let me talk for a moment about Social Security. In recent days there has been a great deal of discussion on that issue. The President indicated that this would be one of the first items we will be confronted with. He proposes to create private accounts in the Social Security system, because he says there is a crisis in Social Security. Well, there is not a crisis in Social Security. Let me make it clear. There is no crisis in Social Security. If we have the same economic growth rates in the next 75 years that we had in the past 75 years, Social Security will be just fine.

The only way there is a crisis in Social Security--or you can at least create the impression that there is a crisis--is if you attempt to project growth rates that are dramatically lower than that which we have experienced. If you are going to project lower economic growth rates--1.8 percent, for example--over the coming years, then you cannot predict that somehow investing money in the stock market through private accounts is going to solve any kind of problem.

It is interesting to me that the ethic and value system in America has been that if you are going to provide for your future, you save for retirement. The President is suggesting that we should borrow $1 trillion to $3 trillion and dump it in the stock market and hope things will be all right. Even as we do that, the amendment leaked from the White House says we will cut Social Security benefits by changing the adjustment on wages and prices. The construct is this: Claim there is a crisis where there is not, and borrow $1 trillion to $3 trillion and put it into the stock market at the same time you cut Social Security benefits.

In my judgment, that is a bad policy, one we ought to resist. It is important for people to understand the Social Security system is not an investment program; it has never been that. It was created in the 1930s and signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help the elderly escape the plague of a poverty-ridden old age. When he signed that bill, 50 percent of America's senior citizens were living in poverty. Now it is less than 10 percent. But it is not now and has never been an investment program. It is a core insurance retirement program. It is the foundation of retirement security. It is always there, not subject to risk. It is core retirement insurance. In fact, if you look at your paycheck, it says the money that comes out of your paycheck for this program is FICA. The ``i'' in the FICA is for insurance.

The President wants to confuse us by talking about investments. We have a Social Security program that is a core retirement insurance program. It has worked well for over 70 years. It lifted the hopes and lives of so many tens of millions of senior citizens out of poverty.

We have also, under the rubric of retirement incentives, created 401(k) programs and IRA programs and pension incentives, all of which represent investment accounts. I support those. But that is different than the core insurance program called Social Security. In my judgment, we ought to aspire in this Congress to be working toward Social Security-plus, not Social Security-minus. Those who say the way to build retirement security is to injure the foundation, or begin to take away the foundation that is Social Security insurance, do no favor to senior citizens. The way for us to enhance and embrace and strengthen retirement security is to build on the first, second, and third floors, not destroy the foundation.

Once again, there is no crisis in Social Security. Let me be the first to say that we are living longer, healthier lives, and so the problems that might occur 20, 40, 60 years from now in Social Security are born of success. We are living longer, healthier lives. And if you are a pessimist and believe we will have only 1.8 percent economic growth rates, which is what the basis is for suggesting there is a huge problem in Social Security--if you are a pessimist, then you can suggest there need to be adjustments in Social Security. But that cannot be a pretext for taking apart the Social Security system. That is what some wish to do. They never liked it, don't like it now, and want to take it apart. How? They want to create private investment accounts inside the Social Security system, which is a big wet kiss to Wall Street to move money that is borrowed to Wall Street and hope that somehow the social program will be solvent.

We have already had substantial experience in the last several years with economic projections by the people telling us this will work. They inherited the largest budget surplus in the history of this country and we now have the largest budget deficit in history. They didn't see it coming. They said, by the way, let's count these 10 years of surplus before they exist and give them back in tax cuts. Some of us said maybe we ought to be more conservative. These surpluses don't yet exist. The President said never mind, Katy bar the door, give all these moneys back even though they have not been realized; give them back in tax cuts.

The fact is we turned the largest budget surplus into the largest budget deficit in history. The same people who predicted success for economic failure are the people telling us we ought to take apart the Social Security program under the guise of there being a crisis.

Let me make one additional point that I think is very important. Those who tell us that we will have only 1.8 percent economic growth for the next 75 years, and therefore we have a financing problem with Social Security, also say that private accounts in Social Security invested in the stock market will yield 7 percent. Therefore, it will fix the problem. Double-entry bookkeeping doesn't mean you can pretend. You cannot say on the one hand we are going to have slow economic growth, and therefore a crisis in Social Security, and on the other hand, during periods of slow economic growth we will have 7 percent annual return on private accounts. It doesn't work that way. Third- grade math will tell you that is fundamentally wrong.

My hope is we will have a thoughtful, interesting debate about retirement security and about Social Security. I hope at the end of that debate, we will all agree that we should do nothing to undermine Social Security. If we believe that there is nothing more important than our children and taking care of them, and nothing more important than taking care of our parents when they are elderly, we ought to protect the social safety net that promotes those values.

Social Security has lifted so many in this country out of poverty. It has worked for 70 years and it will work for the next 70 years and well beyond. I for one am not interested in taking apart that which works and which makes this a better place to live. After all, those who gave us what we now have in this country, who went before us and helped build this country, built our communities, factories, and our schools, and helped increase the standard of living, expanded opportunities for our country--those are the people from whom we have inherited this great life.

If we have decided somehow that we don't have the wherewithal to continue to make this Social Security system work for them, to keep it a promise they can count on, then there is something wrong with the value system of this Congress. I don't believe that to be the case. I think at the end of the day we will all agree Social Security is a value that is important, one we will strengthen and keep.

Enhancing retirement security is important as well and, at the end of the day, we ought to have what is called Social Security-plus. We can do Social Security, keep it strong in the long term, and build further incentives for IRAs, 401(k)s, and pension programs. That ought to be our mission statement.

Let me turn back now to the issue of international trade. We have before us the nominee for the U.S. Department of Commerce. That is one of the agencies in our country that deals with trade issues.

Mr. Gutierrez, President Bush's selection to head the Department, is someone whom I will support today. But I don't want this moment to pass without all of us having to confront something that is very uncomfortable for this country, and that is we have a trade policy that is weakening America and that is in fact a ``crisis.'' I described where the crisis doesn't exist, in Social Security; but there is a bona fide crisis in international trade.

Last month, we heard a report that we had a $60 billion trade deficit--just

last month alone, $60 billion. We are told that we should expect, when all of last year's numbers are in, that our trade deficit will top $600 billion. Add to that the budget deficit of over $400 billion, and we have a combined indebtedness of over $1 trillion in this past year alone--$1 trillion. Talk about being irresponsible with our kids' future. This is it. Yet, do you hear anybody talking about the urgency of this? Not a word. Not a whisper. It is like shouting into a strong wind to talk about trade.

Well, let's talk about some of the issues related to this soaring trade deficit. I am going to go through a series of examples.

The January 10 edition of Time Magazine had an interesting article in it. It says:

Chinese pirate companies have long been accused of

illegally copying easy stuff like shoe polish and digital

movies. Now General Motors says a Chinese firm knocked off an

entire vehicle--and Americans could soon start buying its

cars.

So let's talk about that a bit. It is reported that a Chinese firm, called Chery, has stolen production line blueprints for a GM compact car called the Chevrolet Spark. It is a car that General Motors spent hundreds of billions of dollars to develop and the copy car is called QQ. It looks like an identical twin to the Spark. The Chinese company is now offering it for sale in China for $3,600, a third less than the General Motors car.

Chery, the automobile company in China, has now announced plans to sell five different models, including a sport utility vehicle, in the U.S. It teamed up, apparently, with Malcolm Bricklin, who brought the Subaru to America in the 1960s. Their plan is to import up to a quarter of a million Cherys a year starting in 2007. The Chinese want to send us a quarter million Chinese cars in a year.

Well, what to make of that? Let me describe a trade agreement that our country made with China a while back. We had a bilateral trade agreement with China. This is a country that had a large surplus with us. Our negotiators negotiated a deal with China. Inexplicably, they agreed to this. They negotiated a deal where the Chinese can impose a 25 percent tariff on any United States cars we ship to China.

But on any Chinese cars sent to the United States, we impose only a 2.5-percent tariff. So our negotiators said to a country with which we have a giant trade deficit: We will agree with you that you can impose a tariff on bilateral automobile trade that is 10 times higher than that we will agree to impose: 2.5 percent on Chinese cars coming into our country, 25 percent on U.S. cars that we try to sell in China.

You ask yourself: Who on Earth would have done that? I don't have the foggiest idea. Our trade negotiators did it. They apparently wear blue suits, they have tiny little glasses, they are supposed to think, probably have advanced degrees. And yet they close a door somewhere in a private room, someplace in secret, and reach a deal that says to the Chinese: on bilateral automobile trade, you go ahead and impose a tariff 10 times the tariff we will impose on automobiles between China and the United States.

Guess what. We sell very few cars in China. We cannot get them in, and the Chinese, having apparently stolen the designs on a new compact car from General Motors, are set to send us a quarter of a million cars.

Should we perhaps find out who negotiates this sort of incompetence so we make sure they never again negotiate on behalf of our country because this is not some theory?

This is about jobs. When you do this, it means you are reducing America's job base and enhancing the job base in other countries.

On a related note, in a recent year, we saw 690,000 Korean automobiles come to the United States to be sold in the United States. Guess how many American cars we sold in Korea? We sold 3,800. So Korea sent us 690,000, and we sold them 3,800.

There was a time during this period when Korean consumers seemed to want to buy a pickup truck called the Dodge Dakota. Several dozen orders for Dodge Dakota trucks were coming into Dodge dealers in Korea. Guess what. The Korean government decided to announce that the Dodge Dakota wasn't safe, because it was capable of having a topper installed in the back, and that wasn't customary in Korea. So they did a big splashy announcement, and before you knew it, all the orders were cancelled. Korean consumers got the message.

So in Korea they want to sell their cars in the American marketplace, but they do not want our cars sold in Korea. Will we say to the Koreans or the Chinese, for that matter, that either your market is open to our products, or you are going to have to see your products in Zambia or Nigeria? I don't think so because our country does not have the nerve, strength, will, or backbone to stand up for America's economic interests, for American workers, American businesses, and American jobs.

I want just one Member of Congress, in the House or Senate, to justify this to me--just one. Or to justify the circumstances of mutual automobile trade with China by which we agreed with China that we will allow them to impose a tariff that is 10 times ours on bilateral automobile trade. Just one person I would like to stand up and say: Yes, that makes sense. We know it doesn't make sense. We know it undercuts American workers. It moves American jobs overseas, and yet no one seems to care very much about it.

Here is another item in the news. There is a new report that talks about the export of jobs from this country to India. AMR Research estimates that the Indian information technology labor force will be larger than 3 million by 2010, and half the workers will be performing jobs for U.S. companies.

Let's talk for a moment about that: these information technology jobs that are being outsourced to India are good jobs. But there are some who think that this outsourcing is a good thing. In fact, the President's economic report to Congress said that, for example, having Indian radiologists reading x rays of U.S. patients would be a good thing.

What will happen to the 1.5 million Americans who will lose their jobs in information technology services to the country of India?

Well, one thing they will not be doing is producing merchandise for export to India. In 2003, we had a trade deficit with India. That same year the average duty, the average tariff on goods that we were to sell to India was 30 percent. According to the U.S. trade ambassador's office, India's economy is one of the most closed in the world and, thus, India's tariffs remain among the highest in the world.

Now the trade ambassador's office says the Indian economy has the most potential for U.S. exports. I expect that is true, because India has 1 billion people. One out of six consumers on the planet lives in India. It is the second most populous nation in the world. Yet where does it list on the U.S. export markets? Second, 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th? No, 24th.

In fact, we export nearly twice as much to Peru as we export to India. And yet we see all of these reports now about American jobs being sent to India. Apparently, the only thing we can send to India are jobs, not goods. India has a 105-percent tariff on cars and motorcycles--in fact, we cannot get motorcycles into India--40 percent on oranges, over 100 percent on raisins, 30 percent on soybeans, 100 percent on durum wheat.

You know, you can't have balanced trade these days, even if you want it.

A family in Illinois this year decided to do something different for Christmas. They decided they were going to ban China from under their Christmas tree. The mother decided that she was going to buy U.S.-made Christmas gifts. Peggy and Dave Smedley were going to buy American for Christmas.

Of course, that meant no iPods, no digital cameras, no tabletop football games. And in the end, it was nearly impossible for them to find the Christmas gifts they wanted for their children. They found a Monopoly board game that appeared to be made in the U.S. but they discovered the dice actually came from China. Their son wanted American-made boots, and Peggy Smedley looked in 30 stores for boots that were made in America before giving up. The Smedley kids were concerned they might not get any presents at all for Christmas because of their mom and dad deciding they wanted to buy American.

The 13-year-old Smedley son said he did not know what to expect because ``I

have never bought American before,'' which I suppose is an innocent comment from a 13-year-old kid about the world in which we live.

Levis used to be all American. They are gone. In fact, I am told that the Levis Company does not make any Levis anymore. The Levis Company makes no Levis. All the Levis are made under contract by contractors.

The Christian Science Monitor reported the other day something else that I thought was kind of interesting. One would have thought when they walked around with a pair of cowboy boots that they were walking in an all-American pair of shoes, but last month I noticed in the Christian Science Monitor even the cowboy boots now sport ``made in China.'' Tony Lamas, top of the line cowboy boots, inside the label it may read ``made in China.'' Thirty-five to 40 percent of these cowboy boots have now been outsourced.

I have spoken often of Fig Newton cookies. It used to be that Fig Newton was the all-American cookie. Well, next time somebody says, let us have some Mexican food, just say, give me a Fig Newton, from Monterey, Mexico. By the way, Kraft Foods moved the production of Fig Newton cookies to Monterey, Mexico. So eat a Fig Newton and you are eating Mexican food.

Fruit of the Loom used to be all-American underwear but not any longer. They are gone. Levis are gone. Huffy Bicycles are gone. Schwinn Bicycles are gone. Little Red Wagon Radio Flier is gone. They were all American, all made by Americans, all represented jobs for American families, and they are all gone.

Why is all of this happening? Well, what has happened is multinational corporations have discovered there are somewhere around a billion people available on this globe who work for a very small amount of money. There is someone in Indonesia today who is making a pair of shoes. There is 24 cents direct labor in that pair of shoes that will be sold in Pittsburgh, Fargo, or Los Angeles for $80 a pair, and that woman named Shadisha is going to be paid 24 to 30 cents an hour.

There is someone in China today who is making Huffy bicycles. That man or woman took the job of someone in Ohio who was making $11 an hour, plus benefits. They got fired. They lost their jobs because the Huffy bicycles were moved to China and now workers in China are paid 33 cents an hour. They work 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day making Huffy bicycles.

The Little Red Wagon Radio Flier Wagon that has been made in American for over a century is gone. It is because corporations have discovered there are a billion people who will work for very little money. In some cases, they employ 12-year-olds. They work 12 hours a day. They pay them 12 cents an hour. If my colleagues do not believe it, I can show them.

The question is, What does all that mean to our country? What does it mean to the world's strongest economy? What does it mean when one hollows out the manufacturing base of a country such as the United States? What does it mean when we say to American workers that there is a new day and a new competition, when we say to the American workers, yes, for a century they fought for rights, some lost their lives in the streets of this country fighting for the right to organize; they fought for the right to work in a safe workplace; the American people fought for the right to understand that corporations and factories would not pump effluents and poisons into the air and water; we fought for child labor laws so 12-year-olds would not be sent down into the mines or into the factories? What does it mean when we are told it is a new day and none of those things matter because those who produce can produce elsewhere where no restrictions like that apply?

A kid can be hired and he can be worked 7 days a week and paid pennies. And it is said to the American worker, you must compete with that, and if you cannot compete, we are going to outsource, and if you do not like outsourcing, tough luck.

I am just wondering how all of this adds up. This country has been a wonderful country because going all the way back to when Henry Ford made the Model T he understood that production needs customers. Even as he produced, he was hiring workers and saying: I want to give workers a decent income with which they can purchase that which we are producing. He understood he was employing his own customers.

Now we have a different set of circumstances in our country. Now we have products made by child labor, in countries that pollute their environment, and we are asked to compete with that. After 9/11, when there was a surge of demand for American flags, do you know where they came from? From overseas. The import of American flags jumped to 113 million American flags in a year. And I bet you that many of those flags were made in conditions that would gravely offend the principles that the flag represents.

I will put up a chart that shows the growth of the trade deficits over recent years, because it describes what this is all about. Year after year, we see these trade deficits growing and growing. It is as if it does not matter. Nobody here cares. Nobody here has lost their job because of these numbers. There is not one politician in America who has lost their job to outsourcing. There is not one journalist who has lost their job to outsourcing of which I am aware. So it is as if it does not exist. It is just the other people who lose their jobs. It is people who take a shower after work because they sweat all day at work working long and hard on the factory floor and they are told somehow they cannot make it.

I have talked about Huffy bicycles. I received a letter from the Huffy folks that they were upset about the fact. They were a little huffy, as the saying would go, about my discussion.

In Ohio, workers used to make Huffy bicycles. In fact, Huffy bicycles had a little decal of the American flag.

I do not know any of those folks but my guess is that they loved their jobs. They made a great bicycle. They had 20 percent of the bicycle market in America. People could buy them at Sears, Wal-Mart, Kmart. I am sure that one day when they had to go home and tell their spouse, honey, I have lost my job, that it was a painful day. They had to tell their spouse and their families: I lost this job not because I was a bad worker--I worked for 20 years for this company; I did a good job; I produced a good product--but I lost my job because my company discovered they could hire somebody for 33 cents an hour to build that bicycle.

Incidentally, that bicycle took the American flag off the front decal and replaced it with a decal of the globe once they moved production to China.

What does all of that mean? What does it mean for our country? We are running giant trade deficits with virtually everyone in the world: China, huge trade deficits. This map shows the world, and it shows in red the countries with which we run trade deficits. It is unbelievable. Here is the United States. Of course we can't run a deficit with ourselves. We are running a surplus with Australia down here. We will probably fix that soon, as soon as the new trade agreement with Australia kicks in, because in almost every case, every trade agreement we have done turned out badly for this country because we don't have the backbone to stand up for the interests of our producers.

Australia, Egypt, Belarus--hey, look, we have a bright spot over here in Belarus--these are among the very few countries with whom we have a deficit. With almost the entire world we are running very large trade deficits; virtually the entire world.

How long will that last? Mexico is a good example. We had a trade surplus with Mexico--a small one, but a trade surplus. Then we did what was called the North American Free Trade Agreement, and this chart shows what happened. Right here is the trade surplus. Then we did a North American Free Trade Agreement. We had a bunch of these economists, who cannot tell their home address and can't remember their phone numbers, give us all kind of highfalutin' predictions about what is going to happen. They said this is going to be good for America; the only thing that will come into this country from Mexico with this trade agreement is the product of low-skilled, low-wage jobs. Guess what. The three largest imports into America are automobiles, automobile parts, and electronics, all the product of high-skilled jobs, exactly the opposite of what these so-called economic experts told us.

In the meantime, what happened with our trade with Mexico? We have a

giant trade deficit, serious and growing.

Canada is another example. With respect to Canada, which was part of NAFTA as well, the trade deficit was a modest trade deficit when we started. Now it has grown into a very substantial trade deficit.

The trade deficit with China is a dramatic trade deficit and it is growing much worse. I just described part of the problem with China. You can see what is happening here to this country.

You can make a case, if you are an economist, that the budget deficit is money we owe to ourselves. You can make that case. You can't make that case with the trade deficit. The trade deficit is a deficit we owe to others in other parts of the world and will be paid inevitably with a lower standing of living in this country. It will. You cannot make any other case. That is why I come to the floor to say this is very serious and very troublesome.

I have not mentioned the Japanese. The Japanese are also a good example because every year, for well over a decade, we have had a large and abiding trade deficit with Japan. Japan, as you know, has managed trade. The result of managed trade with Japan is that the Japanese continue to keep certain of our products out, yet they want to ship all of their products to the United States.

I recall we did a beef agreement with Japan. About 15 years ago this country did a beef agreement with Japan. At the end of the beef agreement you would have thought we won the Olympics. Our trade negotiators were ecstatic, big celebration, jubilation, front page of the Washington Post, good for us. Guess what. Fifteen years after a beef agreement with Japan, a country with which we have a very large trade deficit--we still have a 50-percent tariff on beef going into Japan.

That would by any definition be a failure, but not with our country, because we have such low expectations of ourselves and such low expectations of our trade negotiators being willing to stand up for the economic interests of this country.

The list is almost endless. Wheat to China. I have spoken at great length about wheat to China, the promises of the Chinese to allow 8.5 million metric tons of wheat into China and, once again, promises that were not kept.

The list is virtually endless.

We have all these trade negotiators who go out and negotiate agreements. As I said, they wear blue suits and small glasses. My preference would be to put a uniform on them that says ``USA'' on the front, because I think they forget for whom they work half the time. But nonetheless they negotiate these agreements.

Even though in my judgment these agreements have been incompetently negotiated, they are supposed to enforce the agreements. But let me tell you what is happening in the Department.

We had roughly a $130 billion deficit with China previously. It is probably $160 to $170 billion just in the last year. Yet we have only 19 people in the Department whose job it is to enforce trade agreements with China.

We have a $66 billion trade deficit with Japan. There are only 10 people in the Commerce Department working on opening up trade markets in Japan.

We have a $13 billion trade deficit with Korea. There are 2\3/4\ people--I don't know who the three-quarters of a person is--working to open up the Korean market.

Our deficit with the European Union is $77 billion. There are only 15 people working to open up the European markets. It is unbelievable.

As I have said, we fought for a century about the basic conditions of production and the basic rights of workers. We now accept into this country the products of working people who are told they will be fired if they try to start a labor union--just fired.

We accept products into this country that are produced by kids. We had a hearing in the Congress some while ago that was heartbreaking. It described children who, in a country far away from here, were making carpets and rugs. They were locked in buildings making these carpets and rugs. It described the conditions in which the employer took gunpowder and put it on the fingertips of these children and lit the gunpowder to produce scarring, so these young children, using needles to sew these carpets, when they stuck their fingers would not be injured. The scarring would allow these children to be more productive.

Is there an admission price to the American marketplace? Have we decided the 1 billion-plus people around the world under virtually any conditions of production are acceptable for multinational corporations to seek out and to employ to produce products that will be shipped into our marketplace? Is that what we want? Do we believe that is in the long-term economic interests of this country? Do we understand that it will injure this country's long-term economy? It will mean that we will hollow out not only the manufacturing sector but also the middle class in this country, because the jobs they used to expect, the manufacturing jobs that would pay well, with benefits, are not there. They have been outsourced for a quarter an hour or 50 cents an hour.

Those who talk about these issues are often called protectionists; xenophobic isolationist stooges who just don't get it.

The fact is, I am interested in protecting the economic interests of this country. No, I am not interested in protecting Americans from fair competition. I think competition represents something that is important to our producers as well because it makes them better producers. But fair competition is critical. I don't believe producers or workers in this country can or should be linked to competition with those in other parts of the world who can produce in circumstances where they pollute the air and water, hire children, pay pennies, and work in unsafe plants. That is why on trade agreements we have fought on the floor of the Senate to add provisions dealing with environment and labor, and we have been rebuffed at every circumstance and at every turn. We are seeing the results of that now--day after day after day.

I want to talk just for a moment about something else that Mr. Gutierrez will inherit at the Commerce Department. I know it is not quite the important issue that China, the European Union, Mexico, Canada, and Korea are with respect to trade, but I want to talk for a moment about Cuba.

Cuba is 90 miles off our shores. It is a Communist country. The fact is, we do business with Communist countries. We sell and buy from China, a Communist country. We do the same with Vietnam. We do that because our country's official policy is engagement through trade and travel. That is the way to move these countries in the right direction. We believe that very strongly. Republicans and Democrats claim that to be the case.

It seems to be different, however, with Cuba. Although we do business with Communist China and Communist Vietnam, Cuba seems somehow to be different.

Then Senator John Ashcroft and I offered an amendment on the floor of the Senate which became law. It became law after 40 years of an embargo in which we couldn't sell a thing to Cuba. Senator Ashcroft and I said it is immoral to use food and medicine as a weapon; that we ought to be able to sell food into the Cuban marketplace. So we got it passed. The provision was that the Cubans had to buy food with cash. But, nonetheless, we got it passed.

The Cubans have purchased nearly $1 billion worth of agricultural products from American farmers. But some in this administration have never liked that, and they are doing everything they can to derail and try to stop the sale of agricultural products into Cuba. We have had farm fairs and agricultural fairs in Cuba. The Farm Bureau, the Farmers Union, and American farmers and ranchers have gone to Cuba. Cuba has bought nearly $1 billion worth of agricultural products from this country.

Let me tell you what has happened. At an organization called OFAC, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, they have been doing everything conceivable to stop people from traveling to Cuba--yes, even to travel to sell agricultural products--and to stop the sale of agricultural products into Cuba.

I want to give an example of the absurdity of this. This is a young woman, Joni Scott, who is looking at a Bible. She is a wonderful young woman, a Christian woman, who went to Cuba to

distribute free Bibles. Guess what happened to this young American woman who went to Cuba to distribute free Bibles? Our Treasury Department tracked her down and tried to slap her with a $10,000 fine. What was her transgression? Trying to distribute free Bibles in Cuba.

Or, I could show you a picture of Joan Sloat who joined a Canadian bicycle tour. What was her transgression? This 76-year-old grandmother rode a bicycle for 10 days in Cuba. They wanted to attach her Social Security through our own Treasury Department. The Office of Foreign Assets Control tracked her down and levied a big fine. What they are doing is unbelievable.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control in Treasury is supposed to be tracking the funding for terrorists. But let me describe the way they are using their assets. Twenty-one people down at the Office of Foreign Assets Control are tracking American citizens who are suspected of taking a vacation in Cuba. They are under suspicion of taking a vacation in Cuba--21 people. They have four people tracking Osama bin Laden's financial network. It is unbelievably dumb--the allocation of resources in this manner.

Why do I raise this? Because in the last 2 months or so the administration has decided they want to shut down the agricultural sales that do exist and can exist legally by reinterpreting when payment must be made and trying to create a circumstance that will wave off those who want to sell into Cuba.

Mr. Gutierrez and I had a discussion about that when he came to see me. He is probably going to have to follow the administration line. It is that our farmers ought to be penalized and ought to be prevented from selling into the Cuban marketplace. The European farmers can sell there. The Canadian farmers can sell there. We have a natural advantage to sell into that marketplace because it is closest to us. But this administration wants American farmers and ranchers to pay the cost of their foreign policy.

One day about 2 years ago, as a result of the legislation which I got passed, 22 train car loads of dried peas left North Dakota, the first shipment in 42 years into the Cuban marketplace. I am proud of that.

I think the administration ought to be ashamed at what they are doing. They are saying that trade and travel is the road to enlightenment and the road to democratic reform in China and in Vietnam, but it is not in Cuba.

It has nothing to do with common sense. It has to do with politics. The administration knows it, and they are doing everything they can to have American farmers and ranchers--for that matter, people such as Joni Scott or Joan Sloat--paying the price of that burden. It makes no sense at all.

My hope is that as we proceed, some small modicum of commonsense might infiltrate the basic trade policies that are debated both in this Congress and also in the administration.

It is not the case, for instance, that outsourcing of American jobs strengthens this country. The President's chief economic adviser said outsourcing is good. I guess it's good as long as he doesn't lose his job. The fact is, neither he nor people like him ever lose their jobs in these kinds of constructs. They never lose their jobs.

This is about working families, the kind of people who helped build this country of ours, the kind of people who value work. They are the ones who lose their jobs. They are the victims of unfair trade.

My hope is just once--perhaps just once--there would be some kind of fire alarm with a $60 billion-a-month trade deficit. But I hear nothing. There is this vast silence. I hear nothing about that being a crisis. All we hear is Social Security is in crisis, which, of course, is not the case.

My hope is that perhaps we can find a way in the coming months, we can wake up to the fact that there is a crisis in trade, and perhaps have the President call an emergency meeting of policymakers and decide what we do about this. But there is this vast silence about it. Nobody wants to talk about it. Again, I suspect it is because nobody here is losing their jobs. But this country will not long remain a world economic power if it doesn't put its fundamentals in order.

There is a wonderful book called ``The Lexis and the Olive Tree'' written by Tom Friedman. In it, he makes the point that just because there is a run on a bank, it is not about whether the bank is solvent or has a problem, it is about whether people perceive it to be solvent. He makes the point that market traders always perceive strengths and weakness. And when they move against your country and against your currency, beware.

This country cannot long exist with a $1 trillion annual shortfall. In both budget deficits and trade deficits, the fundamentals are out of line--completely out of order--and everyone here should know it. Yet we are waltzing around here acting as if nothing is happening. That doesn't serve this country's interest. We know better. The American people know better. Our trade policies are in serious trouble and deserve our full attention.

On behalf of American workers, on behalf of American businesses, and on behalf of the future of this great country, we owe it to our kids, we owe it to our future to address this important issue.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss funding for a wind transmission study that was included in the fiscal year 2005 Omnibus Appropriations bill signed into law last December. As a member of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, I appreciated the efforts of Senators Domenici and Reid, the chairman and the ranking member of our subcommittee, to include $500,000 for the Western Area Power Administration, WAPA, to continue its work on the placement of additional wind capacity in the Dakotas. They have generously provided funding for similar work for the past two years, and I am glad these efforts will be continued during this coming fiscal year.

North Dakota is the ``Saudi Arabia'' of wind. The Department of Energy has long identified North Dakota as having the greatest wind energy resource and potential for wind generation development in the lower 48 States. During my time in the Senate, I have been pushing hard on a number of fronts to develop our wind energy resources. For example, I have been a strong supporter of the Renewable Portfolio Standard, RPS, which requires utilities to produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. In addition, I believe the Federal Government should be a leader in this area and develop a policy of purchasing electricity from renewable energy sources.

Last February, I hosted the Fifth Annual Wind Energy Conference with the Energy and Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota to further promote this clean and limitless energy resource. Wind energy stakeholders from around the Nation attended this successful event, which attracted 436 people from 30 States and three Canadian provinces. Last year, the conference included a second day of events because of the overwhelming interest in wind energy. As a result of the wind energy industry's growth, North Dakota's skyline and economic future are forever changing and progressing forward. We will be doing another conference in February 2005, which more broadly embraces renewable energy in the Upper Midwest.

Despite my continued efforts to increase the use of wind as an energy source, North Dakota faces many transmission challenges in moving wind energy to other parts of the country. I have held field hearings in North Dakota on these issues and have also supported the development of new transmission technologies. While the Senate has wisely included funding for the last several years for WAPA to make some progress on these transmission problems, the fact remains that more needs to be done. WAPA and others have done a number of general studies on this issue and I think the next steps are clear. WAPA should use the funding earmarked in FY2005 for an Environmental Impact Study, EIS, that would allow transmission expansion for wind generation to be placed in North and South Dakota and should use the remaining funds to support specific demonstration projects in the region.

With respect to site-specific projects to support wind development for future electric generation, I believe that WAPA should first develop parameters for determining what constitutes a bona fide wind project. In doing this, WAPA should ensure that projects meet the following requirements: a minimum period of at least one year; minimum anemometer height of at least 40 meters; multiple monitoring points allowing calculation of wind shear; a defined system interconnection point and wind right easements adequate for the proposed project. To make these limited funds stretch farther, I would expect any proposed project to include a 50-50 cost share provision. It is my hope that WAPA will be able to support projects that will accurately determine the transmission requirements and related costs associated with the installation of specific wind and coal generation projects.

Following this guidance, it is my expectation that WAPA will use this funding to make real progress on these transmission problems in the next fiscal year, and provide wider benefits to the large region of the U.S. served by WAPA. After all, WAPA was created to market hydropower, a renewable energy resource. Wind is the next step.

Mr. President, I am an original cosponsor of legislation which was introduced today by Senators Johnson and Enzi. This legislation requires that a mandatory system of country of-origin labeling be in place before the U.S. Department of Agriculture can open the border to imports of live Canadian cattle.

This legislation would not be necessary if USDA and this Administration were not furiously pushing to allow live Canadian cattle into this country. I am very concerned that they are doing this despite the most recent discovery, just a few weeks ago, of two more Canadian cows infected with BSE.

I believe that the decision to open the border to live Canadian cattle should be made based on sound science, not politics. The border should be opened when science indicates that it is safe to do so, and not before.

I also believe that it is necessary that this country have a system of country-of-origin labeling in place before the border is opened. That is the only way American consumers will be able to choose between beef raised in America and beef raised in Canada. Right now there is no way to tell the difference. We must have country-of-origin labeling in place before we allow Canadian cattle into this country, and that is why I am cosponsoring this legislation.

Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

I ask unanimous consent to be recognized following the presentation by Senator Leahy.

Mr. President, let me ask consent to speak for 20 minutes in morning business.

Mr. President, I want to speak today about several items, the first of which is the sale of agricultural goods to Cuba.

Some years ago, Attorney General John Ashcroft, who then was a U.S. Senator, and I, offered an amendment that opened the opportunity to sell agricultural commodities into the Cuban marketplace. For over 40 years that marketplace had been closed to American farmers because of an embargo.

The bill that Congress passed was called the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000. It permitted agricultural sales to Cuba on the condition that the Cubans had to use cash in order to purchase agricultural commodities from this country. We have now sold over $900 million worth of farm commodities to the Cuban marketplace for cash. In fact, about 1\1/2\ or 2 years ago, 22 train carloads of dried peas left North Dakota to be shipped into the Cuban marketplace-- the first time in 42 years our farmers had an opportunity to sell into this market that the Canadians and the Europeans had been selling into all along.

That is what we did in the legislation. I felt that having an embargo on food shipments to Cuba all those years was wrong. It didn't affect Fidel Castro. We tried to injure Fidel Castro by slapping on this embargo which included food and medicine, which I thought was an insidious policy. It didn't hurt Fidel Castro. He never missed a breakfast, lunch, or dinner because we were not able to sell food into Cuba.

The same is true with travel restrictions. We prohibited Americans from traveling into Cuba except for those who are able to get a license from the Treasury Department, which is increasingly difficult to do. Restricting the American people's right to travel is not hurting Fidel Castro. It simply injures the American people. We can travel in Communist China and in Communist Vietnam but we can't travel in Cuba. I have held up a picture on the floor of the Senate of Joni Scott. She went to Cuba to distribute free Bibles. This administration's Treasury Department tracked her down and said we are going to try to slap a $10,000 fine on you for distributing free Bibles in Cuba. I have also shown the picture of Joan Slote, a retired senior Olympian in her midseventies. She went to ride a bicycle in Cuba with a Canadian group. The Treasury tracked her down even as she was dealing with her son's brain cancer and slapped a fine on her and threatened, by the way, to seize her Social Security payments.

It is outrageous what this policy has been with respect to Cuba. But we had a small victory when Senator Ashcroft and I were able to change the law so that our farmers and ranchers could sell into the Cuban marketplace. Since then we have sold $900 million of agricultural commodities for cash to Cuba.

In recent weeks something else has happened. It is apparent this administration is fighting every possible way to shut down the opportunities of farmers and ranchers to sell into the Cuban marketplace. Here is a new way. This chart shows part of the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 legislation. Here are the words that stipulate that the Cubans must pay ``cash in advance'' for food they purchase. And that is exactly what the Cubans have done for about $900 million in shipments so far. But someone at Treasury took a look at this, and said, You know, there is a way to interpret these words to shut down these shipments even tighter. We will interpret cash in advance to mean the cash must be received by the exporter before anything can be shipped toward Cuba.

That is much different from the way the term cash in advance has been generally understood by the export community and the way I as an author would have understood what we meant. Up to now, cash in advance meant that you must pay cash before you take receipt of the product. That ship goes to Cuba with dried peas, or wheat, or flour, or beef. Before it is offloaded and the Cubans take possession, they must pay cash to the seller. It is very simple. You pay cash before you take possession of the product.

The Treasury Department has now found a way to say, Not good enough. The way sales have been made to Cuba for the past three years is not what the Treasury thinks the legislation says. We insist that the phrase cash in advance means you pay cash before anything gets loaded on the ship.

What is this about? It is about someone down at the Treasury Department who has decided they have found another way to see if they can stop our farmers and ranchers from selling into the Cuban marketplace. I was an author of the legislation, and they need to understand that I knew what I was doing, and I believe my colleague Senator Ashcroft and others in the Congress knew what they were doing. We were trying to provide access to the Cuban marketplace.

This country has now said for almost two dozen years the way to move Communist countries such as China and Vietnam toward greater human rights is through more trade and travel engagement to move them in the right direction. We have said that with China and with Vietnam, both Communist countries. The exception is Cuba. They say if we begin to allow people to travel in Cuba, to trade with Cuba, somehow that is pernicious and moves in the wrong direction.

At some point you have to say that is an argument that is completely devoid of common sense. But Congress has already acted on this. The Congress said it is all right and we believe we should be able to trade with Cuba provided that sale is for cash. The Cubans buy agricultural commodities from us.

They pay for it through a European bank with cash so that no direct transfer of funds from Cuba to a U.S. institution. And now there is someone who has found a way to restrict this, to try to interrupt rice shipments and other shipments to Cuba.

The farm community was caught unaware by this issue. I was unaware of it. Once we discovered it, I called people in the Bush administration to ask, What on earth are you doing this time? Can't you get it straight that this Congress has already said this is the law, this is the way the law reads? I have asked, by the way, the Inspector General at the Department of the Treasury to investigate what OFAC--called the Office of Foreign Assets Control--is doing here. Essentially, the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury is supposed to be tracking money to terrorists. They are supposed to be shutting down the funding for Osama bin Laden. They are supposed to be tracking the network of funds around the world that finances terrorism.

But what are the people at OFAC doing? They are tracking down Joan Slote and Joni Scott who traveled to Cuba to ride bicycles and distribute free Bibles. They are spending time trying to figure out how they can reinterpret Federal law to try to put a wrench in the crankcase of farmers and ranchers who are trying to sell into the Cuban marketplace. They ought to be ashamed of themselves down at OFAC. They know better than that.

When Secretary of Treasury O'Neill testified at a hearing a couple of years ago, I asked him repeatedly about this. He finally answered, but he didn't want to. I asked him, Wouldn't you, with some common sense, much rather use your assets in OFAC to track the financing of terrorists than track Americans who are suspected of taking a vacation in Cuba? Finally, he said, Sure, sure.

The OFAC is not a very big agency. But they have over 20 people who are tracking this Cuba issue trying to nab an American person who is suspected of taking vacations in Cuba or trying to find ways to reinterpret the law to shut down agricultural trade to Cuba. They have more people doing that than they have tracking Osama bin Laden, and trying to shut down Osama bin Laden's network of funding to support his terrorist activity.

OFAC ought to be ashamed. What a false choice for the security of this country. And what a false choice for the welfare and benefit of family farmers and ranchers, just like the Europeans and Canadians and others who have access to this marketplace. My hope is they will have a meeting in the administration. My understanding is they had one late yesterday afternoon, or will have one today, and perhaps some common sense will prevail. If not, we will find a way here on the floor of the Congress to see if we can't make the right thing happen and perhaps force them to use their resources--or perhaps if they are misusing their resources, to diminish the resources they have.

In any event, we have a significant problem in agricultural trade.

Ten years ago, we had a $25 billion agricultural trade surplus. This year, it is $9 billion. It shrank from $25 billion to $9 billion, and next year it is expected to be zero. For the first time in over 50 years we will not have a surplus in agricultural trade, according to the estimates in the administration.

If that is the case, why are they trying to shut down our sales of agricultural product to Cuba? It doesn't make sense at all to me.

I hope those in the administration who have done this and who think that redefining the meaning of cash in advance is a genius scheme to try to thwart the will of Congress will think through it more clearly and understand it is a harebrained scheme that doesn't comport at all with the law. My hope is they will finally get that message.

Mr. President, let me mention a couple of other trade issues because I think they are critically important. I am going to spend a great deal of time on trade issues in this coming session of Congress. We have the largest trade deficit in the history of the country. That translates into lost jobs and lost opportunity for our country. This town is completely brain dead on trade issues.

We can start with the Washington Post and the major news outlets. They do not cover trade or care about it, and if they cover it at all, they only cover one side, and that is the side of so-called free trade. Let me tell you where the so-called mantra of free trade has led: the largest trade deficit in the history of our country with massive outsourcing of jobs replaced with jobs that pay less with fewer benefits in our country.

I have spoken at great length about the trade issues to a deafening silence; it could be because of my presentation. But this country, this Congress, this town, has to get serious about this issue because it is hollowing out the economic stability and opportunity for this country's future.

We have a huge unprecedented trade deficit with China. We buy everything China has to manufacture--shoes, shirts, shorts, trinkets, toys, just name it. It is coming in an armada of ships every single day. We buy every single day nearly $2 billion more from other countries than we are able to export.

Why do we do that? I have spoken about Huffy bicycles, and I will not go through the story today, but Ohio workers making Huffy bicycles, proud of their jobs, lost their jobs, and Huffy bicycles are now made in China. The little red wagon, American Flyer, made in America for 120 years, but the employees lost their jobs to China.

A new report, December 3rd in the Washington Post: ``A Rough Ride for Schwinn Bicycles.'' We know Schwinn bicycles. I rode a Schwinn when I was a kid. They are now made in China. This story describes the mistake of Schwinn bicycles. They decided as a company they needed to try to continue to stay in the United States and manufacture bicycles here. What a huge mistake, they decided later, because it drove them into bankruptcy. So there are no longer any Schwinn bicycles made in America.

Let me give an example of why this is happening, whether it is Huffy or Schwinn bicycles or a thousand other items.

This is a story about unrest in a Chinese manufacturing plant from the Washington Post. In the latest unrest, about 1,000 workers staged a walk out on November 7th at the Shanlin Technology appliance factory near Guangzhou, demanding higher overtime pay and more days off, according to the government-run New China News Agency. The workers returned to the assembly line a day later after receiving assurances that overtime pay would rise by 12 cents to 36 cents an hour and that they would get two days off a month.

When the Huffy jobs went from Ohio to China, for example, the jobs changed in one respect. The U.S. workers had made $11 an hour plus benefits. The Chinese workers instead make 33 cents an hour and work 12 to 13 hours a day 7 days a week. Some insist that is what America should compete with. I insist that is a race to the bottom of economic standards and one this country should not aspire to win.

What has happened to our Yankee ingenuity when it comes to international trade? We used to be known as good traders. Instead, we now have a strange idea that if we can just open up all markets and have no admission standards or no admission price to the U.S. marketplace, and allow the production of most goods to migrate to countries in the world where you can hire 12-year-olds, pay them 33 cents an hour, work them 12 hours a day, and ship the products to Toledo and Santa Fe, that America would be better off. And that is just not so. In fact, as the jobs migrate from a country that cannot continue to pay workers $11 or $20 an hour, when corporations will simply move the jobs to China where they are paid 33 cents or 50 cents an hour, this country begins to feel the economic pain and the shrinking of economic opportunity.

It seems to me, that after decades of failed trade policy--whether it is GATT, WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA or any one of a number of trade agreements-- at some point those who predicted a good outcome for these trade agreements, and were so fundamentally wrong, should be discredited.

NAFTA is an example. We were told with respect to NAFTA, This is a good thing for our country because what will happen if jobs migrate to Mexico, they will only be low-wage and low-

skill jobs. But since NAFTA has been in effect, the three largest exports from Mexico have been automobiles, automobile parts, and electronics, all the product of high-skilled labor. It is exactly the opposite of what the experts predicted.

I am told that we now import more cars from Mexico than we export to the entire rest of the world. We now import more automobiles from Mexico than we export to the entire rest of the world. What that means is the migration of jobs in automobiles and automobile parts to Mexico after NAFTA. Why? Because of lower wages and fewer health, environmental, and safety regulations on manufacturing. That has meant those jobs have left our country. It results in part in this very significant trade deficit, which, in my judgment, injures this country and is a long-term serious problem.

I intend to speak at much greater length about that, and repeatedly, because we must find legislative approaches to interrupt this failed trade policy. I am not saying I am opposed to free trade. I believe trade must be fair trade. There must be fair trade requirements. This free trade is a mantra that people chant. But chanting ``free trade'' at a time when we are up to our neck and choking on trade debt, with jobs moving from the country in wholesale quantity, it is time to stop that and decide it ought not be something to be ashamed of for anyone to say: My interest is in the economic well-being of the United States of America. I am so tired of people refusing to say: My interest is in protecting the economy of our country.

Why are we afraid to stand up for American jobs? Why do we believe it is inappropriate for an employee to make $15 an hour in a manufacturing plant? Somehow large corporations have convinced most policymakers and editorial writers that it makes a lot of sense to hollow out our manufacturing business.

I guarantee this: No country will long remain a world economic power if it does not have a strong manufacturing base. We are headed in the wrong direction. This country needs to make a U-turn. As I have said, we are completely brain dead in trade policy. We intend to have that discussion. I will force that discussion in the next session of Congress.

Mr. President, the largest area of deficiency for the Congress in the last few years has been the failure to have oversight hearings on issues that demand oversight hearings. I have held some hearings as chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, in cases where members of other committees have asked for oversight hearings and they have been denied. This has been particularly true, by the way, when it comes to Halliburton.

Let me give an example of why oversight hearings are critical. This comes from a report recently on National Public Radio. I will read this because it describes why this Congress must begin exercising its oversight responsibility. This is about waste, fraud, abuse, and the American taxpayers being cheated.

Let me read some of it:

Custer-Battles was a young company founded by former Army

Rangers Scott Custer and Michael Battles who came to Iraq on

borrowed money. An August Wall Street Journal article said

that he (Mr. Battles) only had $450 when he convinced an

official to put Custer-Battles [his new company he formed] on

a list of bidders at an airport security contract.

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

An August Wall Street Journal article said Mr. Michael Battles, a former Army Ranger, showed up in the country of Iraq with $450. He and his partner, former Army Ranger Scott Custer, convinced an official to put Custer-Battles, a new company, on a list of bidders for an airport security contract. They promised to get the job done fast, and they won the contract, which included two upfront cash advances of $2 million each.

Then there was a fellow, a former FBI agent, whose name is Isakson who said 2 weeks into this job, by this two-person company that showed up with no money but got $2 million of advanced funding for this contract at the airport--Isakson, a former FBI agent, said something went wrong. ``They approached me to participate in a scheme to defraud the government.'' Isakson said it involved bidding for cost plus contracts which guarantee payment for a contractor's actual cost plus an agreed to profit margin.

This is what Isakson said:

They would take and open a company in Lebanon and buy

materials through the Lebanese company, which they owned,

then the Lebanese company would sell it to their American

company [Custer-Battles] at a highly inflated rate and then

they would charge their profit on top of the highly inflated

rate. In other words, they would make a [big] profit plus

another profit.

Isakson said he refused to go along, and he warned company officials that such a plan would put them in jail. Again, this is an ex-FBI agent. He said he could not go along with this. It will put you in jail.

The next day at the airport, Isakson claims, Custer-Battles security guards cornered him in a hallway at gunpoint. His brother and his 14- year-old son were there as well.

Isakson said:

They said you're terminated and you're under arrest and

don't move or I'll shoot you.

Isakson said the guard took their weapons and ID badges and eventually turned them out of the airport compound, where they made the dangerous journey from Baghdad to the Jordanian border. He has filed a lawsuit against Custer-Battles over the ordeal, and he is also a party to a $50 million Federal lawsuit filed in Virginia under the False Claims Act.

The other whistleblower in this case is a Pete Baldwin, a former country manager for Custer-Battles in Iraq who now runs another firm there. Baldwin describes a web of false billing practices designed to inflate costs and boost company profits. He cites a deal to provide forklifts on a security detail.

Now, this is what Baldwin says:

They confiscated old Iraqi airways green and white

forklifts and transported them out of the airport facility

which Custer-Battles had control over and painted them blue,

then sold them back to the [U.S.] government on a lease.

He says:

This is a blatant example where something was actually

acquired free and sold back to the government [after they

were repainted blue].

So Baldwin took his suspicions to Government investigators and quit over the company's billing practices. Now Baldwin claims his life has been threatened because of his actions.

The Pentagon has suspended Custer-Battles from receiving further military contracts and sources, according to NPR, say a Federal criminal investigation is ongoing. However, a civil probe ended in October when the U.S. Justice Department declined to join in the whistleblower case.

Here is the key, and it is an interesting piece of information: A spokesman says the Bush administration has made a policy decision that cheating the Coalition Provision Authority in Iraq is, for the most part, not cheating the U.S. Government. Let me say that again. This is quoting Mr. Gracing:

The reason they gave to us is that the Bush administration

has made a policy decision that cheating the Coalition

Provision Authority in Iraq or basically the military, and

for the most part the U.S. military, is not the same as

cheating the U.S. government.

The fact is, the Coalition Provisional Authority was us. It was our money, our resources, our people. So here we have a company that takes forklift trucks from an airport property, moves them someplace to a warehouse, paints them blue, sells them back to the Coalition Provisional Authority, which pays for them with U.S. taxpayer funds, and our U.S. Justice Department says: That's all right. We'll close our eyes while you cheat us because the Coalition Provisional Authority is not really the U.S. Government. Are they nuts? Don't they care whether we are being cheated?

These are the kinds of things that literally beg for oversight hearings. Yet this Congress is dead silent on these issues. I said I have held oversight hearings about Iraq with respect to Halliburton. The minute you talk about Halliburton, somebody raises the Vice President. I did not talk about the Vice President in those hearings, but I talked about Halliburton and about

cheating. This is about Halliburton. It is not about anybody else.

When a company says they are feeding 42,000 soldiers and being paid for it by the U.S. Government and it ends up they are only feeding 14,000 soldiers a day, and 28,000 meals are being paid for that are not being fed, it seems to me there ought to be aggressive oversight hearings to figure out what is going on, who is cheating the Government. Yet there is dead silence.

I come from a really small town, about 300 people. We have one small little cafe right in the middle of Main Street. My guess is, if somebody got a check for 4 meals that were never served, they would sure know that, and the same goes for 14 meals, or 40 meals. It would appropriately be a big deal in my hometown. But 28,000 meals that are billed but were not delivered to U.S. troops? In my little town, they would call that cheating and fraud. Yet there is dead silence with respect to the oversight responsibility we ought to have as a Congress to find out what is happening, why, and who is responsible.

Mr. President, I will have more to say about this as well, and we intend to continue to hold oversight hearings as well in the Democratic Policy Committee.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, are we in morning business?

I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for as much time as I may consume.

Mr. President, as we near the end of the legislative session and its final day or 2 day, it is interesting what kicks around these Chambers: some people have ideas about adding things to the Omnibus appropriations bill. Other people want to take something out that they think is in that bill.

I came across a story in the newspaper this morning that describes something I discussed on the floor of the Senate yesterday. It says, ``GOP looks to repeal food label law.'' Then it quotes the House majority whip saying he expects the Senate to agree to repeal the country-of-origin labeling law now that its proponent, Senator Tom Daschle, is no longer in office.

First of all, Senator Tom Daschle remains in office until the end of his term.

Second, it is true that Senator Daschle is the strongest proponent and actually the architect and the author of the legislation that has created country-of-origin labeling. But I say to those in the GOP who look now to repeal the country-of-origin labeling law that they are in for a fight. Repeal is not going to happen just because somebody has a hiccup in the morning and decides they don't like this law. It is the law. We passed it.

The Secretary of Agriculture dragged her feet and didn't want to implement it. The omnibus conference legislation last fall actually delayed the implementation time for the law, and now they just want to kill it outright, apparently. Let me describe again what it is we are talking about. We are talking about labeling for meats and vegetables.

In the morning, when you put your T-shirt on, there is a label that tells you where that T-shirt was produced. Slip on a pair of shoes or slippers and you will find out where they were produced because they have a label. Go to the grocery store and pick up a can of peas off the shelf and take a look at its label and what is in this can, and you can see where it was produced. Most items that consumers are able to buy these days has a label that tells you where those things were produced. But that is not the case with meats and vegetables.

Country-of-origin labeling is something that is important for our farmers and ranchers because they produce the finest quality of food in the world for the lowest percent of consumers' disposable income. And it is also very important for consumers.

I held up a piece of beef on the floor of the Senate the other day. I said: I defy anyone to tell me where that piece of beef was produced. Where does it come from? Does it come from the processing plant in Mexico that was processing beef and shipping it to the dinner tables of American consumers?

By the way, that processing plant was only inspected once. And when it was inspected, the inspector found that carcasses were hanging in rooms that were not cooled, with feces on the carcasses. The meat was being walked on by the folks who were working in that plant, with bacteria all around. The most unclean conditions you can imagine were in that plant, and eventually it was shut down. But that meat was going to the American kitchen table. Meat was produced in that Mexican processing plant under the most unsanitary of conditions.

That plant was closed down, but it has reopened under a new name, a new ownership.

Does anybody know whether the slab of beef that I held up the other day came from that plant? You don't. It is because there is no labeling. No one has any idea where any of it comes from. That is why farmers and ranchers in this country support labeling. Fruits and vegetables ought to be labeled. Consumers deserve it.

Farmers and ranchers in this country produce the best quality food in the world, and we ought to have country-of-origin labeling for meats and vegetables. Who doesn't want it? The big economic interests don't want it.

When they start whistling, we have people around here who start dancing. The faster they whistle, the faster these folks dance.

Now, apparently, they say let us just dump this proposal that is now law, or let us rather repeal the country-of-origin labeling law.

I say, again, there are those of us who will wage an aggressive fight with those who want to decide to repeal that law.

Not only do we have people who want to stick legislation like this to repeal the country-of-origin labeling in the omnibus bill at the end of this session, which would be a huge step backwards and a real slap in the face not only of consumers but also of farmers and ranchers, but we also still have people blocking legislation that should be completed by this Congress. Let me describe specifically what that is.

We have been working in the Senate for a long while to allow the reimportation of prescription drugs. U.S. consumers pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Brand-name prescription drugs cost a great deal of money in our country. Miracle drugs offer no miracles to those who can't afford to buy them. I commend the drug companies for producing miracle medicines. But there is no excuse for charging the American consumer the highest prices in the world.

I will give you some examples.

If you are a woman and have breast cancer, God forbid and have to take the drug tamoxifen, I have had people tell me that they went to Canada and paid one-tenth of the price they were charged in the United States for that anti-cancer drug.

I spoke just recently, in fact, to a couple in North Dakota who have gone to Canada for 3 straight years to buy tamoxifen. They said they paid one-sixth of the price that was charged locally in this country.

As I indicated, I have heard people say they paid 10 times more in the United States for that drug than you would pay in Canada for that.

What about Lipitor for cholesterol? Lipitor is one of the top selling cholesterol-lowering drugs in the United States. I have two bottles in my office that I have used previously on the floor of the Senate. They look identical because they are made by the same company; the same pill put in the same bottle, sold by the same pharmaceutical company. One was sold in Winnepeg, Canada, and the other one in Grand Forks, ND--the same pill, the same tablet called Lipitor.

The only difference is the price. Buy it in the United States and you pay $1.86 per tablet. Buy it in Canada and you pay $1.01 per tablet.

Why is the price for that cholesterol-lowering drug almost double in the United States? It is because U.S. consumers are charged the highest prices in the world for most brand-name prescription drugs.

We have been trying very hard in the Congress to pass a bill that would allow the consumers to make the choice where to purchase those drugs. In fact, the legislation Senator Snowe and I and others have introduced would allow American pharmacists to go to Canada and buy that lower priced prescription drug and bring it back to our country and pass the savings along to the consumers. But we have been blocked in this effort.

Many of us in the Senate put together a bipartisan bill, and that bipartisan legislation was authored by myself, Senator Snowe, Senator Kennedy, Senator McCain, Senator Daschle, and many others. That bill did not get through the Senate because it was blocked.

I thought I had an agreement with the majority leader. He believed that he had reached a different agreement at about midnight one evening in exchange for releasing a hold on a key nominee. I believe I was told that we were going to be able to see action on that legislation. The majority leader feels differently. I regret that we have that disagreement.

But we come to the end of this session, and the fact is that the effort to help American consumers by putting downward pressure on prescription drug prices in this country has been scuttled. It has been blocked. The White House has blocked it. The FDA has blocked it. The majority in the Senate has blocked it.

In the Presidential debates, in fact, this issue came up. The President was asked, why are you blocking the reimporting of prescription drugs to put downward pressure on prescription drug prices? And the President said, ``I haven't yet''--meaning he hasn't blocked it yet. Of course he has, he has continually blocked it. The President went on to say during the debate:

Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in

from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't

kill you. Now it may well be here in December you'll hear me

say, I think there's a safe way to do it. If they're safe,

they're coming.

But the President meanwhile goes on blocking the reimportation of prescription drugs.

The bill we have written is a bipartisan bill. This is not Democrat versus Republican. It is a bipartisan piece of legislation.

Let me point out with respect to the safety issue, in testimony from an executive of a drug company, a vice president for marketing at Pfizer, Dr. Peter Rost:

The biggest argument against reimportation is safety. What

everyone has conveniently forgotten to tell you is that in

Europe reimportation of drugs has been in place for 20 years.

It is called parallel trading.

In Germany, if you want to buy a prescription drug from Spain because it is cheaper, you can. If you are in France and you want to buy it from Italy, you can do it. It is called parallel trading. The Europeans have done it for 20 years routinely and there is no safety issue.

Our legislation would give American consumers and pharmacists the ability to access FDA-approved drugs that are produced in FDA-approved plants. This approach allows the marketplace to put downward pressure on prescription drug prices here by being able to buy the identical prescription drug, FDA-approved, from Canada, or another country. As long as there is a chain of custody that is safe--and no one argues that the Canadian chain of custody for prescription drugs is not safe-- there is no reason why we should not allow the marketplace to work for the benefit of consumers.

We end this legislative session with this proposal having been blocked.

It is estimated that if Americans could pay the same price as the Canadians for prescription drugs, the consumers of this country would save $38 billion. This is not a small issue. This is a big issue. The fastest rising portion of health care costs is prescription drugs, and we are trying desperately to do something about it.

I don't denigrate the pharmaceutical industry. They are a big industry, strong and tough. They fight hard to protect what they have. I don't denigrate that. But there needs to be some competition in order to put downward pressure on prices. It is unsound public policy for our country to decide to allow the pharmaceutical industry to charge the American consumer the highest prices in the world. It is especially tough for senior citizens. Senior citizens are about 12 percent of the population of this country and they consume one-third of the prescription drugs in America. They have reached that point in their life where they are receiving a lower income and having to shell out substantially more for prescription drugs. Many of them simply say, we cannot afford it.

That is why Republicans and Democrats, together in a bipartisan effort, have tried very hard this year to get this reimportation legislation through the Senate. I regret we come to the final day or days and it remains blocked.

My hope is that those who I felt had reached an agreement with us to give us an opportunity to have a vote on this legislation will understand we will be back the minute the Congress returns, in a new Congress, ready to fight this battle again. This battle is not over. We are not quitting. On behalf of the consumers of this country, they deserve fair treatment with respect to the prices of prescription drugs.

It appears to me we are one or two days from completing this legislative session. I will have great regrets--I believe I speak for my colleagues Senator McCain, Senator Snowe on the Republican side, Senator Daschle, Senator Kennedy, Senator Stabenow and Senator Feingold on the Democratic side--that we have gotten to this point and have been blocked each and every step of the way.

Then we have the President say, I haven't blocked it. Of course, he has blocked it. The FDA, the White House, and the majority in the Senate have blocked our bipartisan bill, an opportunity to try to do something to put downward pressure on prescription drug prices. That, in my judgment, is a

failure of this Congress, and it is a failure I hope we will soon remedy when we turn the calendar over to January and begin a new Congress.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, one area in which the Department of the Treasury should increase their activities is in supporting U.S. financial service firms in opening up markets for our products in other countries. In some of the most important financial markets in the world the Department of the Treasury does not have personnel whose principal responsibility is to assist American financial service firms expand their presence in those markets. The Department should establish Financial Attaches in the following important capital markets:

Brussels: The expected pace of change in the EU financial markets in the next few years and the complexity of capital markets legislation now in formation justifies a focused U.S. presence at the center of the newly expanded EU.

London: London's capital markets play a critical role in the global economy and foreign exchange markets.

Shanghai: The rapidly growing Chinese economy might present significant opportunities for U.S. firms, but recent experience has shown that such opportunities will not materialize without vigorous insistence that China abide by its commitments. It is critical that the U.S Treasury Department have an on-the-ground presence in China.

I look forward to working with my colleagues and the Department of Treasury to establish financial attache positions in Brussels, London and Shanghai and to expand opportunities for U.S. firms.

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

Mr. President, in recent days there have been news reports about our colleagues on the other side of the Capitol Building deciding that they would like to get rid of something called country- of-origin labeling for meats and vegetables. This is a law that has been previously enacted by the Congress saying that consumers have a right to know where their meat and vegetables come from. So a Member of the House and the Speaker of the House and the majority leader of the House have indicated they would like to find a way, in these waning days, perhaps in the Omnibus appropriations bill, to repeal the requirement to establish country-of-origin labeling for meat and vegetables.

Country-of-origin labeling is now the law of the land. The Secretary of Agriculture has been dragging her feet for some long while in implementing it. While she was dragging her feet, the Congress decided to extend the time for implementation, so that time was extended over the objection of many of us. My colleagues, Senator Daschle, Senator Johnson, and many others here in the Chamber objected to that. But, nonetheless, it was done last year in one of these omnibus bills.

If those who are making decisions about what to put in omnibus bills these days decide they want to repeal the country-of-origin labeling law in an omnibus bill this year, they will do a great disservice to American consumers. They will pull the rug out from under farmers and ranchers in our country. Why? Because the fact is, we produce the highest quality food in the world.

Consumers want to know where their food comes from. Almost any consumer in this country can take a look at his or her T-shirt or their shoes, and on the label it will say: Made in the U.S.A. Made in China. You will find out exactly where it was made. We know where shirts come from, and we know where shoes come from because it is all labeled. But meat is not labeled. The law requires it to be, but it is not at this point. So the question is, Will this law remain, and will it, in fact, be implemented, or will it not?

We had a U.S. Department of Agriculture report about the condition of meat that has been imported into this country. And I would like to just show a couple of comments from that report. The report was talking about conditions inside a meatpacking plant in Hermosillo, Mexico. That plant in Mexico supplied raw beef to the American consumers. It had never been inspected and was finally inspected once. Here is what they found. They found:

``Shanks and briskets were contaminated with feces.''

A U.S. Department of Agriculture official wrote of his tour of the plant:

``In the refrigerator a disease-condemned carcass was

observed ready for boning and distribution in commerce . . .

Paint and condensation from dirty surfaces were dripping on

the meat.''

The official found that workers were literally walking on the beef that was going to be approved for export to the United States. They found that a side of beef approved for processing was infected with bacterial blood infection.

The problem is not limited to the Mexican plants. This is one plant in Mexico. Incidentally, this plant was shut down, then reopened under another name, and to my knowledge has never again been inspected.

Mr. President, by unanimous consent let me ask to show this piece of beef from a supermarket.

Mr. President, no one knows where this comes from. No Member of the Senate will know where this originated. Did this come from the Mexican plant I just described? Does it come from a French plant that was also inspected and contaminated? Does this come from one of those plants, or does it come from a domestic source in this country in which inspection, we know, is rigorous? Does it come from a domestic source where we have farmers and ranchers who produce the best supply of meat available in the world? Where does this piece of beef originate? No one knows. Consumers deserve to know. They have a right to know.

The country-of-origin labeling requirement passed by the Congress will give them the opportunity to know, but some of our colleagues around here, hailing the call of the big packing plants and others, decide now they want to try to repeal that. Maybe, just once, this place can stand up on the side of farmers and ranchers and consumers, just once, and ignore the call of the bigger economic interests who say: Let's not do this. We clearly should do this.

Labeling is important. Labeling empowers consumers. Labeling protects American producers who are producing the best quality food at the lowest disposable income of any country in the world. So my message to those who are now sauntering around the Chambers watching this Omnibus appropriations bill be put together is this: It would be a very foolish mistake to believe that the Omnibus appropriations bill should, without any debate, carry a provision that would repeal something Congress has already done that will give people the right to understand where their meat and vegetables come from, where the origination point is for the vegetables and the meat that is being consumed by the American people.

If, in fact, the majority party decides to do this--as I indicated, one Member of the U.S. House especially is proposing it. It has been, it is reported, supported by the Speaker of the House and the majority leader of the House. If they move in this direction, it will be a very serious mistake, in my judgment.