Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Con. Res. 58 submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, and any statements relating to the concurrent resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Commerce Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 376 and that the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 172, S. 1327.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record, without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 167, which is S. 863.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the following calendar numbers be indefinitely postponed en bloc: Calendar No. 433, Calendar No. 490, and Calendar No. 492.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 12 noon on Wednesday, December 5; that on Wednesday, following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders reserved for their use later in the day; that there then be a period of morning business for 60 minutes with the time equally divided and controlled between leaders or their designees, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, and the first half controlled by the majority and the final portion controlled by the Republicans; that at the close of morning business the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 3996, that the mandatory quorum required under rule XXII be waived with respect to the cloture motion filed.

If there is no further business today, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

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

Mr. President, is the business of the Senate at this point the Peruvian Free Trade Agreement?

Mr. President, I am going to speak about that subject, and I will confess, as I start, that the old admonition never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel is something I should have learned long ago. I take issue with a company that buys ink by the tanker truck: the Washington Post.

Speaking of trade, the Washington Post described, I think, why there is not so much of a thoughtful debate about trade as there is a thoughtless debate about it. In this editorial, they say this about trade in an attempt to criticize some of those who are running for President and are distancing themselves from the brand of free trade. What the Washington Post says is that a candidate said the following quote:

NAFTA was a mistake to the extent that it did not deliver

what we had hoped it would, and that is why I call for a

trade time out.

One candidate said NAFTA was a mistake, and they quoted the candidate saying it. The Washington Post says:

Such demagoguery.

So it is now demagoguery for a candidate for President to allege that a trade agreement was a mistake. That is demagoguery? I don't quite understand the Washington Post. The Washington Post says that NAFTA didn't cause the current U.S. trade deficit with Mexico. Really? That is an interesting conclusion, with no facts to support it. There are no facts to support that conclusion.

I think I will show a chart that shows what has happened to our trade with Mexico since the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, was signed. The evidence is pretty substantial about what happened with our trade between the United States and Mexico: Just prior to negotiating a free trade agreement with Mexico, we had a very small surplus with the country of Mexico of $1.5 billion. Now, last year, it went from a very small surplus to a $65 billion deficit. The Washington Post says--about a candidate that said NAFTA was a mistake--that is demagoguery. Give us a break. It is not demagoguery to suggest that something doesn't work when we have gone from a $1.5 billion trade surplus to a $65 billion deficit.

The Washington Post also says that the agreements contributed marginally to the shifting of workers from some less competitive sectors to others. That is arcane language to describe what happened. After NAFTA, the three largest imports from Mexico to the United States are automobiles, automobile parts, and electronics. The contention was made by those who supported NAFTA that this would only mean the migration of low-skill, low-income work to Mexico. It didn't happen quite that way. Automobiles, automobile parts, and electronics represent the products of high-skill labor in this country, and those jobs have been lost.

I only wished to point out that the Washington Post described for us today why this debate about trade has largely been thoughtless. Yes, it is a global economy, I understand that. There are many faces to the global economy--some very attractive and some not so attractive. I will try to describe them both today. The global economy has galloped forward at a very aggressive pace, but the rules have not kept pace. So the result is we have some very significant problems and dislocations. We are drowning in trade debt in this country, and I will describe that.

What is before us is another free trade agreement, the free trade agreement with Peru. Let me say that I can count votes. I understand what will happen in this Chamber. The Senate will support and vote for the free trade agreement with Peru.

I maintain again today that I am not going to vote for additional free trade agreements until benchmarks are attached and there is accountability for those benchmarks. Had we had benchmarks in the NAFTA, we would not have gone from a $1.5 billion surplus to a $65 billion deficit. We would have, at some point, said, wait a second, something is happening that is not right for our country.

First of all, I don't think we should be signing new trade agreements until we fix some of the fundamental problems in the old agreements. Two, I believe that the Peru agreement represents an expansion of a failed model. It has failed before and will fail again. And, No. 3, I don't think it contains--I know it doesn't contain any benchmarks or accountability or a mechanism for withdrawal should the trade agreement fail at least relative to what we expect the trade agreement to accomplish.

So I don't intend to support this trade agreement, not because I don't support trade. I support trade, and plenty of it. I believe, however, it ought to be fair. And the failed model brought to us time and time again I will demonstrate today has failed this country. It has not failed everybody, but it has failed this country, and it is not in this country's best interest. This is language I assume the Washington Post would call demagoguery. If they suggest that it is demagoguery for a candidate for President to say NAFTA was a mistake, when all of the evidence demonstrates it was a mistake, I assume they may want to turn off their television sets when I am speaking at this point because they will certainly consider that demagoguery. It is rather, however, not a thoughtless debate. It is a thoughtful debate from the standpoint of those of us who come to the floor of the Senate who say we want trade, we support trade, we believe expanded trade is helpful to this country, but we insist for a change that the model of a trade agreement be a model that is mutually beneficial and stands up for the interests of both sides to that agreement.

The agreement with Peru by itself will not do damage to this country. That is not what I allege today. Let me describe our trade: With China, $343 billion; Mexico, $332 billion; Japan, $120 billion; Peru, $9 billion. I don't allege that trade with Peru, which is about three- tenths of 1 percent of our trade, is going to be a serious problem because of the passage of a failed model. We have very large trade deficits with China, Japan, Mexico, the European Union, and Canada, all of whom are major trading partners. Instead of doing something about those significant and growing problems--China, Japan, Canada, the European Union, and Mexico--instead of doing something about that, we bring the same failed model to the floor of the Senate.

I recognize and admit that this model with respect to Peru has labor standards in it that did not exist and environmental standards that did not exist in some other trade agreements. I will talk about that in a moment, especially with respect to Jordan. But the fact is, the foundation of this agreement is the same failed model that we have seen in the past.

I want to talk about that failed model. I want to talk about the issue of China, especially because when we talk about trade--and we must talk about trade, we have to talk about the 500-pound gorilla with respect to our trade problems. This chart represents what our trade with China looks like since 1995 through last year, 2006. Success? No. These red lines going down represent huge trade deficits. Does anybody think that is a success? I think it is a huge failure for our country to be so fundamentally out of balance in our trade relationship with China. It just continues and continues and continues.

The question is: What will we do about that? Some of the cheerleaders for the free-trade movement and the cheerleaders who would look at this would say: You need to understand something. And, obviously, they would say: Senator Dorgan does not understand it. Here is what it is. They say: We have increased our annual exports to China by $39 billion from 2000 to 2006. That is what they would say. They would say: Look at this, we have increased our exports by $39 billion in just 5\1/2\ years. They just will not tell you the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would suggest. The rest of the story is, yes, we did increase our exports to China by $39 billion, but we increased our imports from China by $188 billion. Isn't it interesting the picture you get that is very different if you have both sides of the equation? What will happen is those who support the free-trade model who think it works, who want to bury their head in the sand with respect to anything that represents something we should fix in our trade circumstance, they would only show you this $39 billion, only tell you that. They will strut around, thumbing their suspenders, puffing on their cigars saying: Look at all this; isn't this wonderful? We had a $40 billion increase in exports to the country of China in the last 6 years. What do you think about that? Do you think that is not successful? We are dramatically increasing our exports to China. How on Earth can you suggest that is not in this country's best interest? They would stop the story right there.

But if you pick up the story where it should be picked up, you would say: Yes, that is true we had almost a $40 billion increase in exports, and good for us. The problem is, it was more than four times that amount in increased imports to this country, which means we had a net reduction in our trade relationship--that is, a net increase in our deficit--with China of over $140 billion. That is the rest of the story.

So for every $6 of merchandise we buy from China, the Chinese buy $1 of merchandise from us. That is not mutually beneficial trade. There are a lot of reasons for this surging trade deficit with China.

If I might show the bar chart that shows the surging deficits, there are many reasons for this surge, but among them is that we have a pretty bankrupt trade agreement with China. China is rampant with what is called intellectual property theft. Walk down a street in China and buy a brand-new American movie, a CD. Piracy, they manipulate their currency, they have unfair barriers against U.S. exports, they have an unfair relationship in which U.S. jobs go to China because of, in many cases--not all cases but in many cases--sweatshop conditions in China. And so we have these circumstances with China that contribute to this dramatic increase in the U.S. trade deficit with China.

China has increasingly become a platform for manufacturing that used to occur in this country. Why? Because they are better manufacturers? No. It is because you can get products manufactured for a fraction of the price of manufacturing them in this country.

I indicated earlier the situation with Mexico. I described the situation with China. The trade deficit increased dramatically with China, and the trade deficit increased dramatically with Mexico. The same is true with Canada. With Japan, it hasn't increased dramatically. It has always been large and never changed because that is the way Japan wants it.

In the Wall Street Journal on October 4 of this year, there was a very interesting story. It said in the headline: ``Republicans Grow Skeptical of Free Trade.'' And the story described a poll--understand, this is in the Wall Street Journal--that by a 2-to-1 margin, Republican voters believe free-trade deals have been bad for our country's economy. I suppose the Washington Post would also suggest that is demagoguery. Again, by a 2-to-1 margin, Republican voters believe free- trade deals have been bad for our economy.

The poll found that 59 percent of polled Republican voters agreed with the following statement:

Foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy because

imports from abroad have reduced demand for American-made

goods, cost jobs here at home, and produced potentially

unsafe products.

Only 32 percent of the polled Republican voters agreed with the following statement:

Foreign trade has been good for the U.S. economy because

demand for U.S. products abroad has resulted in economic

growth and jobs for Americans here at home and provided more

choices for consumers.

This poll in the Wall Street Journal suggests, I think, a dramatic change in the way Americans view this free-trade movement.

In December 1999, the Wall Street Journal did a poll that found that only 31 percent of Republican voters thought free-trade agreements hurt our country. But in this past month's poll, they found the number of Republican voters went from 31 percent to 59 percent. These are Republican voters. That is where the substantial support has come from for these free-trade agreements. Clearly, the American people have seen the results of the free-trade agreements. They understand these red lines, these giant trade deficits are not just red lines. This isn't just some red ink. It represents lost jobs, lost dreams. It represents somebody coming home at night to their family saying: Honey, I lost my job, not because I am a bad worker but because I can't compete with 20- cent-an-hour labor in Shen-chen, China.

When NAFTA was debated in Congress in the early 1990s, its proponents argued, as I indicated earlier with respect to the U.S. deficit with Mexico, the proponents argued this would result in the creation of a couple hundred thousand new jobs in the United

States. But it is widely acknowledged by any economist who knows anything that this did not lead to the increased promise of U.S. jobs. The 200,000 jobs created annually, that was from a study by Mr. Hufbauer and Mr. Schott, a couple of economists.

I have indicated that I previously taught economics in college, but I was able to overcome that experience. Hufbauer and Schott gave us this best economists' analysis we can find, I guess. They said this will be a couple hundred thousand new jobs, 170,000 new jobs by 1995, and they rounded that up to 200,000 when it was sold to the Congress. We now know at least 412,000 jobs have been certified as lost due to NAFTA under just one program at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Ten years after NAFTA had been approved, I commissioned a study from the Congressional Research Service which identified the top 100 companies that laid off U.S. workers as a result of NAFTA between 1994 and 2002. When I asked the question of the Congressional Research Service: Tell us how many Americans have lost their jobs due to NAFTA-- they went to the Department of Labor, which has a program called trade adjustment assistance. It is a program that gives temporary benefits to those who are laid off as a result of NAFTA. This program requires companies to actually certify that they intended to eliminate U.S. jobs specifically because of NAFTA.

The question of whether we have lost jobs due to NAFTA is on this chart coming from the Congressional Research Service that got the data from the U.S. Department of Labor. It tells us where these jobs came from, where they were lost. Vanity Fair, 16,000 jobs; Levi Strauss, 15,676 jobs. These are certifications by the companies that they intend to lay off or did layoff these employees because of NAFTA. You can just go down the list. This isn't me saying it, these are the certifications these companies have made to the Department of Labor that these jobs are gone because of NAFTA, and they want trade adjustment assistance for the workers who lost their jobs.

Sara Lee, Lucent, Fruit of the Loom, Texas. Fruit of the Loom underwear left. It is not that people stopped needing or wearing underwear. It is just they stopped making them in America. So Fruit of the Loom is gone; 5,352 people who made underwear in this country lost their jobs. That is certified by Fruit of the Loom to the Labor Department saying: We laid them off.

This is not a question of whether there has been a loss of jobs as a result of NAFTA. Just the top 100 companies have certified to that, the top 100 companies laid off 201,000 U.S. jobs due to NAFTA. And if we look at all U.S. companies, the total number of U.S. jobs certified as lost to NAFTA are 412,000, and that is just under this one program, trade adjustment assistance.

I wanted to focus on the top 100 companies, but we could have done all of them. This is sufficient, however, to show what has happened with respect to NAFTA.

Some familiar products: Levi Strauss. I don't know that there is anything more American than wearing a pair of Levis, right? So we all buy Levis, except they don't make one pair of Levis in America, not one. Is it because we don't make good pockets, can't sew good seats? No, not all. It is just that all those jobs migrated out of this country in search of cheap labor.

There is a company called Nabisco. Do you know what it stands for? National Biscuit Company. Nabisco is short for National Biscuit Company. Presumably ``national'' is in this country, except that the National Biscuit Company now belongs outside this country when it comes to making cookies. So Fig Newton cookies moved from America to Mexico. The National Biscuit Company Fig Newton cookies migrated to Mexico. Is it because they can't shovel fig paste as effectively in New Jersey as they can in Mexico? No. Shoveling fig paste is the same all over the world. It is just you can get somebody to shovel fig paste a whole lot less expensively in Mexico than in this country, if you use low-wage labor that is not protected by the kinds of basic labor protections we have in this country. So the National Biscuit Company is no longer national, at least with respect to Fig Newton cookies.

I mentioned Fruit of the Loom, Mattel. We hear a lot about Mattel these days, of toys from China. They closed their last factory in the United States, a western Kentucky plant, that produced toys--Barbie playhouses and so on, battery-powered pickup trucks--for 30 years. They shipped production from the 980-person plant in Kentucky to factories in Mexico.

John Deere, 1,150 workers, on this chart--made lawn mowers, chainsaws--gone to Mexico.

Well, we understand the Peru trade agreement is an agreement that is not going to threaten the economic interests of this country. I don't assert that is the case. I do assert, however, that it is a failed model, and we have seen plenty of it. I have been on the floor of the Senate on many occasions saying why don't we fix that which is wrong in previous agreements before we bring new agreements to the floor of the Senate. But we never do that. We just keep bringing new agreements to the Senate.

The Peru trade deal does include some labor protections. That is true. And that is a welcomed development. But labor protections in a trade agreement don't mean very much if there is not the political will to enforce them. Under the Peru deal, the only party that can seek enforcement of labor violations is the administration. And the Bush administration has, apparently, I am told, given assurances to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce these labor provisions are not going to be vigorously enforced. When the deal was announced on May 2007, the U.S. Chamber issued a statement saying it had received assurances that the labor provisions could not be enforced. Let me quote:

We are encouraged by assurances that the labor provisions

cannot be read to require compliance with ILO Conventions.

That is from the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He was saying: I am comfortable because these aren't going to work. He was referring specifically to a promise made by the U.S. Trade Representatives that the Peru agreement wouldn't require that U.S. workers be assured the minimal labor rights guaranteed by the ILO.

Mr. President, if the Chamber had been assured the agreement will not be enforced with respect to the rights for U.S. workers, you can bet the labor provisions would not be enforced at all.

Even during the negotiations for the Peru agreement, the administration made it very plain it has no interest in having labor protections in the trade deal.

In fact, in 2005, the President of Peru offered to include in the text of the original agreement a commitment to comply with the International Labor Organization's standards for basic labor rights. That came from the President of Peru, saying: We will do this. In fact, the U.S. trade ambassador's office quickly rejected it. They quickly said no. They vowed not to include a commitment to labor standards in the free-trade agreement. It was only after the 2006 elections, in which a number of very interesting people were elected to this body on these very issues--standing up for American interests, for the American economy, and for the rights of American workers--only then did the U.S. Trade Representative, realizing these trade agreements would not move forward, only then did they decide to budge.

But I think the true colors were demonstrated the year previous when the administration turned down the request or the offer by the President of Peru. It is clear to me there is no interest in enforcing these labor provisions, and I have just suggested the evidence of that.

It is interesting, the only other previous trade agreement that included labor provisions was Jordan, and in the Jordan agreement--and I give the previous administration some credit, again, for including a labor provision in the Jordan trade agreement. Those provisions have not been adequately enforced, and the result has been the proliferation of sweatshops in the country of Jordan--the only country with whom we have a free-trade agreement that includes labor provisions.

Now, our trade balance, when we signed the trade agreement with Jordan, we had a trade surplus of about $243 million. That disappeared very quickly, which is the case with all our trade agreements. That surplus disappeared by 2002, and by 2005, that $200-plus million surplus had turned to a $600-plus million deficit, and our balance with Jordan has gotten worse

every year since the agreement was signed. Let me say that again. Our trade balance with Jordan has deteriorated every single year since the trade agreement was signed.

In May of this year, the New York Times exposed how the free-trade agreement with the country of Jordan has been used to create sweatshops all over Jordan. It turns out that when the agreement was signed in 1999--this is the story in the New York Times, titled ``An Ugly Side of Free Trade: Sweatshops in Jordan''--there began to be imported into Jordan guest workers--guest workers from Bangladesh, from Sri Lanka, and elsewhere--to work in factories and in plants in sweatshop conditions.

Have you ever heard of a 40-hour work shift? No, I am not talking about a 40-hour week. I am talking about a 40-hour shift. Well, it is happening in some of these plants. Have you heard of people working 100 to 110 hours a week every single week, 7 days a week, with 1 day off every 3 or 4 months? Have you heard of people working for a month, a second month, a third month, and never getting paid; and when asked to be paid, getting beaten? Have you heard of people who spend 3 minutes making a colorful bikini for a lingerie shop in this country that is going to be sold for $14 and they receive just a pittance, working in sweatshop conditions? A story from the National Labor Committee just described such a circumstance with a widely known American company.

Mr. President, despite the fact labor provisions existed in the Jordan Free Trade Agreement, no one has sought to enforce those requirements, those labor provisions.

Now, the other reason I do not support moving ahead with additional free-trade agreements is, there are no benchmarks. It seems to me, and it seems to a number of my colleagues who have introduced legislation with me, that we ought to have benchmarks. Whether it is with agreements with China, agreements with Canada, or Mexico, or Japan, we ought to have benchmarks to decide what is the result of what we have just done. It doesn't matter to people in this Chamber, apparently, that we are drowning in trade debt that gets worse and worse and worse, and yet the worse the trade debt becomes, the more they come to the floor of the Senate crowing about how wonderful it is. I mean, I don't understand it.

Mr. President, we have proposals to have free-trade agreements coming behind the Peru agreement. One is with Panama, one is with Colombia, and one is with South Korea. All of them, by the way, are negotiated under something called fast track, where the legislative branch generously decided it would wear a straitjacket and promise if an administration, any administration, negotiated trade agreements in secret, behind closed doors, where others weren't allowed to venture, and they were brought back after an agreement was reached to this Chamber, the folks in this Chamber who supported that would agree they would prevent the offering of any amendments.

So before the action started, they said: We will agree to wear a straitjacket once you have told us what you have done.

It is the most unbelievably antidemocratic action, and also an action, I think, that undermines the very essence of what the Senate should be about. Nonetheless, that is the method by which these have been negotiated.

Now, fortunately, we will not have additional agreements negotiated under those circumstances because the fast-track authority ran out June 30, and it will not be restored. But these agreements were negotiated under fast track.

Now, let me describe to you, if I might--and I can do this with two dozen or 100 products, but I will do it this way because it demonstrates the complete incompetence of our negotiators and the complete incompetence of our negotiated product. This chart represents automobiles from Korea. And with respect to our trade with Korea in automobiles, it is worth about $9 billion a year. So we have a lot going on with respect to Korean automobiles. If you drive down the streets of this country, you will find automobiles that come from Korea. In fact, in 2005, 740,000 Korean-made cars were put on boats and shipped across the ocean to be sold in the United States--740,000 Korean-made cars were shipped to the United States to be sold.

Well, guess how many U.S. cars we were able to ship to Korea to sell in Korea. Not 740,000 but 4,500.

So here is the way our trade with Korea looks. All of this white represents Korean cars put on boats to be sold in America. And this little car down here? That is the number of cars we were able to sell in Korea. In fact, 99 percent of the cars driven on the streets of Korea are Korean-made cars, and that is the way they want it. They do not want foreign-made cars in their country. But they want to ship their cars to America, even as they keep American cars out of their marketplace.

We just negotiated a free-trade agreement. Do you think this administration, negotiating in secret, behind closed doors, said to the Koreans: You can't do this. It is not fair trade. You are protecting your jobs in Korea and injuring our jobs in the United States, and we will not allow you to do it. Do you think this is corrected? Absolutely not. Not a word. Just fine. Keep doing it. Doesn't matter. This is about high finance. This is about the free-trade model. It works just fine.

I guess it does if you wear a blue suit and take a shower at the start of the day. But if you are working in a plant someplace making a car and taking a shower at the end of the day because you worked hard, it sure doesn't work well for you because you are the one who loses your job down here.

Let me describe one other thing. We negotiated an agreement with China that is even more incompetent than this. This is incompetent, and I don't know who negotiated it, but this is gross incompetence, in my judgment. In China, we have a bilateral agreement on automobiles. Let me tell you what it is. As I do, I was in a foreign country the other day, and I drove down the street and I saw Chinese cars advertised now to be sold in that country. Well, the Chinese cars are coming to this country. The Chinese are ramping up a very large, very significant automobile export industry, and they are coming, and coming soon--small cars, cost very little, presumably efficient, but they are coming. Here is what our country said to the country of China, with whom we have a very large trade deficit: We will make a deal. It is true we have a big deficit with you, but we will allow you to ship Chinese cars into the American marketplace, and we will charge a 2.5-percent tariff on each of your cars. And we agree with you, if we send American cars to be sold in China, you may charge a 25-percent tariff on our cars sold in your marketplace. A country with whom we have a $230 billion trade deficit, we said: It is OK if you charge a tariff that is ten times higher than our tariff on mutual automobile trade.

Incompetent? Sure. Ignorant? You bet. Certainly ignorant of our economic interests. I would like to find one person to stand on the floor of the Senate and say they support that; that is absolutely fair. I want just one. I don't need two or three to stand up and say that; I want just one who has the courage to say with respect to bilateral automobile trade with China, bilateral automobile trade with South Korea, I think this is just dandy. I think it makes a lot of sense.

I use this only to say I could do this in a dozen instances, but I do it with respect to automobiles. We don't produce automobiles in North Dakota, but I do it to say this is a big job-creating industry. Automobile production is a job-creating industry. We traded a lot of that to Mexico in NAFTA, so now the largest import from Mexico is automobiles. But just look at what we are doing with South Korea, and we have just negotiated a new agreement with them and have done nothing to solve the problem.

Look at what we are doing with China in bilateral trade, and we will see the results of that, even as we now have the largest trade deficit in human history with China. Even as that exists, it is going to get worse because we are going to have a substantial avalanche of imports of Chinese automobiles into this country in circumstances of trade that are fundamentally unfair to this country and to this country's workers.

Now, let me come back to the point at which I started, and it is a Washington Post editorial of today. I don't

know how the Washington Post editorial writers would view this. I assume they would ignore it because you certainly can't defend it. That which is not defensible, those who choose to try, do ignore it. But let me end as I started today by saying the editorial in today's newspaper which states a candidate saying ``NAFTA was a mistake'' is engaged in demagoguery really is a thoughtless way to engage in a discussion about international trade.

I come from a State that needs to trade a lot, and we need to find a foreign home for a substantial amount of our agricultural production. I support trade. But I do not support what has happened in recent years, and for that I am considered, I suppose by some, as somebody who doesn't get it.

If you are not part of a ``free trade'' crowd, you are someone who is some sort of a xenophobic isolationist stooge who can't see over the horizon.

The problem is, the American people now understand. Look at the Wall Street Journal poll I referenced. The American people, and not just the American people but the subgroup of Republicans, are opposing these free trade models that have resulted in mass trade deficits. They are opposing them by a 2-to-1 margin. I think it would do well for people to pay heed to that, including people who are serving in public office. It is not that the American people are behind the politicians. The political system is far behind the American people in being enlightened about what this trade does to our standard of living.

I know my colleagues wish to speak, but I will make a couple of other points. We fought for 100 years to raise standards in this country. We fought long and we fought hard. People lost their lives because of it. We raised standards. We lifted people up. We said there must be a minimum wage, there must be child labor laws, there must be a safe workplace, there must be the right to organize. We did all those things and we expanded and built a middle class that was nearly unbelievable. Our country became strong--a country in which you can get a job that paid well and you had job security; you likely had a retirement program and health care; you were proud of what you did and often you went to work for a company and you expected to spend a career working for that company.

Things have changed. All too often these days workers are like wrenches, considered to be a tool: use them up, throw them away. Don't worry too much about them. That is not an ethic that works well in the traditions of this country.

For 100 years, we fought to raise standards in this country and now people say to us our standards somehow do not match standards around the world and so, inevitably, we have to find a way to fit in. Fitting in means diminished standards, pushing them down, competing with someone in a toy factory in Chenghai, China, making 30 cents an hour, 20 cents an hour. That is not ``fitting in'' in a way that works to this country's best interests.

The Presiding Officer is from Chicago. In Chicago, there was a wonderful immigrant man who decided to build red wagons and he named them ``Radio Flyer.'' Everyone has ridden in them. The reason he named them Radio Flyers is he loved Marconi. This immigrant who came to this country and wanted to build something, he loved Marconi and he loved airplanes so decided to build his little red wagon in Chicago and he named it Radio Flyer, little red wagon. For 110 years, it was made in Illinois. But it is not anymore. All those little red wagons that are pulling those little tykes around this country are made in China. It is not just the little red wagon, I could go on forever. Etch-a-sketch, from Bryan, OH, Huffy bicycle, they are all gone. Everyone who worked for all those companies, their jobs are gone.

Why? Because some have decided to say we should be able to compete with 20-cents-an-hour, 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. That is not what represents the best of the standards we created over the last century and should not be what we accept.

I am in favor of bringing to the floor of the Senate a debate about trade and the conditions under which trade represents mutually beneficial conditions for those with whom we trade and for us as well. But I will not continue to vote on trade agreements and cast my vote in an affirmative way on trade agreements that do not have benchmarks and accountability, that represent what we believe to be the best interests of our country and our workers.

We shall and we will and we are participating in the global economy. But we have a right as a nation to decide the conditions under which we will participate in that. Those conditions ought to be to pull others up, not push us down. That is why I believe the American workers-- judging by that Wall Street Journal poll and I think judging by the last election--American workers and the American voters understand what is at stake. It is not about standing up and saying I support this mantra, this slogan of free trade. It is about saying America wants to be a leader in trade and that leadership should lead in the direction of supporting workers, of supporting the standards we have built.

It is interesting now in recent months, and somewhat disconcerting, that we are now seeing the product of globalization. It has many faces, some wonderful and some not too good. One of those faces comes from a toy shelf in which a wonderful looking toy that is to be sold for a young child's Christmas present this Christmas season turns out to be poison. It comes from a plant, I assume, produced by a contracting company in China. They all say--whoops, sorry, excuse me.

Would that have happened in Ohio or Michigan? Would they have been able to use those standards that produce unsafe toys? I don't think so. Why? Because we have regulations and standards and we have enforcement. That is the difference.

I believe when we talk about trade agreements--whether it is Peru, China, NAFTA, CAFTA--I think we ought to be talking about benchmarks and standards and we ought to be talking about things that represent the best interests of this country.

Let me finish, again, by saying I support trade and plenty of it, but I demand and insist it be fair trade and I demand and insist that this administration and others begin fixing some of the problems they have created in past agreements that I think undermine this country's economic interests.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to offer a brief statement in tribute to Nathan Good Iron.

Nathan J. Good Iron was a high school basketball star, a college student, a new father. This young man of promise died in an enemy attack in Afghanistan a year ago while serving with a unit of the North Dakota National Guard, the 188th Air Defense Artillery. His family learned the terrible news on Thanksgiving Day of 2006.

Nathan was a Hidatsa Indian, a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara of the Fort Berthold Reservation. For more than a thousand years, the Hidatsa people have lived in just a single place, along the banks of the Missouri River in North Dakota. Always a pastoral people, they resided in sizeable cities, cultivating extensive, lush gardens along the river, hunting buffalo and other game in the prairies around them. When white adventurers and traders began showing up, the Hidatsa were welcoming and friendly. Their villages, and those of their nearby allies--the Mandan and Arikara--were centers of trade and exploration.

But when it was necessary, when enemies invaded their homeland, the Hidatsa proved themselves strong and valiant warriors, establishing a long, epic history of courage and valor on the battlefield.

Such traits are not easily lost by a civilization. They persist through the generations. And the Hidatsa now have a new symbol of bravery, Nathan Good Iron.

Nathan was recently honored by a 3-day powwow in his memory. Powwows, which have long and rich traditions, are always events of high pageantry and symbolism. Soldiers and veterans receive special recognition at these powerful exhibitions and so it is appropriate that Nathan was honored with this noteworthy memorial powwow.

That powwow was an occasion for remembrance and joy for Nathan's 25 years of life, a proud memorial for his youthful sacrifice, and recognition of his patriotism, his championship of democracy, and his courageous willingness to put himself in harm's way when America called.

Please allow me, on behalf of the American people, to send my most respectful and admiring salute.

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

Mr. President, I know the Senate is about to adjourn. I wish to take a minute. Last evening, I called a legion club in a small town in southwestern North Dakota, a State I am privileged to represent in the Senate, and said congratulations to a group of young men from my hometown of slightly less than 300 people, Regent, ND, who combined with a school in Mott. The Regent-Mott team won the nine-man State championship football game last week at the Fargo Dome in Fargo, ND. I called last evening to several hundred people who gathered to say congratulations to the players and talk about how proud they were. I wish to add my congratulations today. I told them I was going to do so on the floor of the Senate.

It is a big deal for a small community to have the kind of community pride and the achievement of winning a State championship.

The communities of Regent and Mott--the community I grew up in was a town of 300 people in Regent, ND, and

Mott is slightly larger than that, but it is a wonderful community. It is a community that has the kind of small-town values one would expect.

When I grew up in that community, I graduated in a senior high school class of nine students. I have always talked about the tapestry of the Senate. I sit in the Senate with Joe Lieberman, from Connecticut, on one side of me and Dianne Feinstein, a Senator from California, on the other side. We have people coming from all corners of this country to serve in this great place. My privilege is to come from a town of about 300 people and a high school senior class of nine students.

We didn't, when I was in that senior class of nine students, win a State championship. Finally, the students from that school combined with a school in neighboring Mott, ND, and did win a State championship. They are enormously proud, and I am proud of them. They actually played in what is called the Fargo Dome, a very large indoor dome in Fargo, ND. That is over 300 miles from southwestern North Dakota, but distance doesn't mean too much to us out on the northern Great Plains. Driving is not such a chore. There is not a lot of traffic. People are pretty courteous to each other. We drive a lot of miles on virtually every occasion.

I wished to describe the pride I have in a very small community. Hettinger County, to describe one more specific, in North Dakota, is larger than the State of Rhode Island in landmass. It has 2,700 citizens in the entire county spread out among three towns and also a lot of family farms. It is, in my judgment, the cradle of family values and all things that are sensible and all things that are likable about American life.

I wished to, again, come to the floor today to say to the Regent and Mott schools and those young boys in Hettinger County congratulations on a State championship and to the coach who has coached for 22 years. One might expect the number of hours that man has invested in the lives of young people, and last Saturday he had the privilege of coaching a State championship team. I know how proud he is as well.

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

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I understand I have time in morning business. Let me claim that time.

Mr. President, I want to talk about several things today. I want to start with this question of why, at the end of the legislative session, there is such intractability in trying to get the appropriations bills done.

It is a paradox to me that President Bush, who has come to this town in the last 7 years, and at the start of his Presidency said, ``I want a fiscal policy that moves in a certain direction.'' He had a sufficient number of votes in the Congress to accommodate that so he said, ``Look, it appears in the next 10 years we are going to have very large budget surpluses, so I want put in place very large tax cuts, most of which will go to wealthy Americans.'' I did not support that, but a number of people in his party did, so it became enacted. I said we ought to be conservative. We ought to worry things might change. Maybe these surpluses won't appear. We do not have them yet. They are only projections.

Well, guess what? The President got his fiscal policy, and those surpluses did not, in fact, appear. We faced a recession, 9/11, a war in Afghanistan, a war in Iraq, and a continuing war against terrorism-- all of which has been very costly. We have run up $3 trillion in debt with this President's fiscal policy--$3 trillion. Now, I think it is unusual that at this stage of this session of Congress the President has done two things. He has sent to this Congress a request for $196 billion in emergency funding for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq-- mostly for Iraq.

He wants $196 billion in emergency funding--none of it paid for. He says: This is my priority. If you do not support it, you do not support the troops. We do not intend to pay for it. It is called an emergency.

At the same time, he has made another request of Congress. He has said: The budget I sent to you is a budget locked in stone, and if you do not meet those numbers, if you are over those numbers on anything, I intend to veto the bills.

Eight to ten appropriations bills he has threatened to veto. We are $22 billion over the President's numbers in his budget for investment here at home. I am talking about the things that improve roads, do the water projects that are necessary, build infrastructure, invest in health, and invest in education. We are $22 billion over the President's budget request.

The President says: I will have none of that. The money we are spending to invest in things here at home, we will not compromise on that. I will veto all of those bills. So I am going to be a fiscally responsible President on $22 billion with respect to investments in this country, and then I demand $196 billion from you in Congress, on an emergency basis. None of it paid for. All of it borrowed in order to prosecute the war.

By the way, that $196 billion is not all to support the troops. A substantial part of it is for contractors. I have been on the floor talking about the greatest waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country with contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have been stolen blind by contractors.

One short story: This country says that we will commit to building 144 health clinics in Iraq. So our Government hires a contractor to go build health clinics in Iraq. The money is all gone. Over $200 million of the money is gone, but the health clinics do not exist. Out of over 200 health clinics, there are only 20 in operation.

An Iraqi doctor came to see me and testified at a policy committee hearing. He said: I went to the health minister of Iraq to find out where these health clinics were because I knew the American taxpayer spent the money for them. The contractor got the money to build them, and I wanted to go see these health clinics and tour them to find out what has been done. The Iraqi health minister said: You don't understand. Most of these are imaginary clinics. They have never been built.

Well, the money is gone. The contractor got the money. The American taxpayer got fleeced. The President wants more money, an additional $196 billion. He says: If I don't get it, then you don't support the troops. Then he says: By the way, I don't support the extra $22 billion to invest in health care, to invest in energy, to invest in water projects, to invest in roads, or to invest in this country.

I say to the President, it is time, long past the time, to start taking care of things in this country. I have a list on my desk of water projects that we are doing in Iraq costing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. I have the specific names of the water projects which we are building in Iraq. The President also says he wants over a half a billion dollars less in funding than the Congress is recommending for the Corps of Engineers to build water projects in this country. This is funding to repair dams, to do dredging, and to do the things we need to do to fix water projects in this country.

Why such a reluctance to invest here at home? I do not understand it. But why the contradiction? The President wants to spend $196 billion-- without paying for any of it--and then crow to the east that somehow he is a fiscal conservative because he is opposed to $22 billion spent here at home.

Now in the next several weeks, we are going to have to reconcile this, and I hope, in one way or another, this President will be able to try to find out what his true identity is. It certainly is not a fiscal conservative. That is talk. Talk is cheap.

Look at what he is asking for: $196 billion to be added to the debt. None of it paid for. All of it borrowed. Then he says that he is opposed to $22 billion to invest here at home.

That is not fiscal conservatism. That is ignoring needs here in this country and spending money in a profligate way, especially on contractors which are fleecing the American people in my judgement. I hope we can reach an agreement on meeting our appropriations needs. That is what we need to do. This place works and this democracy works by agreement and compromise with people of good will.

Mr. President, I mention that because I want to talk about two areas of speculation that bother me a lot, both of which relate not to the financial issues of this fiscal policy coming from President Bush, but it relates to the issue of whether you believe Government has a role in proper regulation in certain areas.

The price of a barrel of oil today is trading at $94 a barrel. It has been flirting with $100 a barrel. The price of oil has been going up, up, up in the last year. Well, it is interesting when you take a look at what is happening with oil prices. Take a look at supply and demand factors and ask yourself if the fundamentals with respect to oil supply and demand justify $100 a barrel of oil? The answer is no.

Let me read to you something from a fellow, Fadel Gheit, who works for Oppenheimer & Sons. Here is what the energy analyst for Oppenheimer & Sons said last week. He said:

There is absolutely no shortage of oil. . . . I'm

absolutely convinced that oil prices shouldn't be a dime

above $55 a barrel. . . . Oil speculators include ``the

largest financial institutions in the world.'' ``Call it the

world's largest gambling hall. . . . It's open 24/7. . . .

Unfortunately, it's totally unregulated. . . . This is like a

highway with no cops and no speed limit, and everybody's

going 120 miles per hour.''

Let me tell you what is happening with the price of oil. This is an oil analyst from Oppenheimer & Sons saying that there is no justification for oil being a dime over $55 a barrel. We have hedge funds in the futures market buying oil. We have investment banks in the futures market. We have investment banks building facilities to store oil. Now, why are investment banks building facilities to store oil? It is because they believe oil will be more valuable in the future. If they buy it and store it, then they will make money in the future.

So instead of a futures market that works with respect to the fundamentals of the supply and demand of oil, we have a carnival of greed in the futures market, in my judgment. We have investment banks hip deep, we have hedge funds hip deep in this, and we have all kinds of things that are going on that are driving up the price of oil.

Who are the victims? The people filling up at the gas pumps have to pay this price that, in my judgment, is unsupported by the fundamentals of supply and demand.

What is the circumstance here? Well, the circumstance, like most things, is we do not have the capability to regulate very effectively.

Let me tell you this story, if I might, about a 32-year-old trader at a giant hedge fund, and I did not mention that hedge funds are in these markets as well, in a very big way. A 32-year-old trader at a hedge fund named Amaranth held sway over the price the country paid for natural gas a year or so ago. Let me tell you what he did. He helped lead to the collapse of an $8 billion hedge fund named Amaranth. This comes from the Washington Post:

His positions were so big that he could cause the price to

move in the way he wanted by buying or selling massive

amounts of his holdings in the last 30 minutes of trading on

NYMEX, a move known as ``smashing the close,'' federal

regulators say.

At one point, in the summer of 2006, Mr. Hunter, the 32-

year-old trader, controlled up to 70 percent of the natural

gas commodities on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX)

that were scheduled to supply companies and homes in November

of last year and more than 40 percent of contracts for the

entire winter season.

Now, this relates to the question of a piece of legislation that is entitled ``Close the Enron Loophole'' Act that Senator Levin and I have introduced. The fact is, in these energy futures, some of them are on regulated exchanges, but many of them are not. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission does not have the capability to see exactly what is happening in these futures contracts and in these over-the-counter or unrelated areas. We need, in my judgment, to pass legislation to try to stop this rampant speculation of unregulated trading.

There needs to be a futures market. A futures market is very important to provide liquidity. But when a futures market becomes a gambling hall, and you start with investment banks and hedge funds, and all of these activities that have very little to do with the fundamentals of supply and demand, then there are very serious problems that must be addressed.

Now, it could likely be the case that the price of oil will come down in a precipitous way as well. It does not seem that way at the moment. But it could because, clearly, this is a speculative bubble. In my judgment, the price is not justified by the fundamentals of supply and demand. Are we going to have a tightening of supplies in the future? Yes, I understand that. The Chinese want to drive 100 million more cars on their roads in the next 15 years. They are going to build these roads, they are going to drive on them. Is that going to increase demand? Sure it is.

Russia wants to capture more oil. I am told they would love to find ways to impede the opportunity of oil and energy supplies coming from the Caspian Sea to the West. Does that potentially impact the price of oil? Sure it does.

But the fact is this: At least at the moment, with the price of oil on the futures market, we have a situation in which the trading, in many cases, is completely unregulated and not transparent. We need to change that. There needs to be some regulation. This administration does not believe that. They have never believed in regulation. We understand what happened with respect to the crash of Enron and the bilking of tens of billions of dollars from consumers on the West Coast. Enron, in many ways, was a criminal enterprise, and there are people now in jail as a result of it. The regulators sat on their hands, dead from the neck up, believing: No, no, no, no, this is the market working. It was not the market working. It was criminal activity, and people were hurt, a lot of them.

With respect to the oil futures market, there needs to be effective regulation. I am not alleging illegal activity here. I am saying, however, it is not healthy to have an amount of speculation in that market that is far beyond anything that would be reasonable, given the supply and demand of oil.

I have one additional topic I want to cover, but the majority leader is on the floor. I would be happy to yield to him.