Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Children's Protection from Violent Programming Act. This legislation is of vital importance to our young children and their families.

The purpose of the bill is to require the Federal Communications Commission to consider whether to institute a ``Safe Harbor'' during which gratuitously violent television programming could not be televised to America's children. Today, I am joined in this effort by several of my colleagues, Senators Hutchison, Inouye, and Dorgan, who are all original cosponsors of the legislation. I have sponsored similar legislation in each of the last five Congresses and this same legislation was reported out of the Senate Commerce Committee during the 106th Congress by a vote of 17 to 1. I feel compelled to reintroduce this bill again to stem the tide of violent programming that is becoming more and more prevalent in our society. Unfortunately, violence in the media begets violence by our youths and we have an obligation to address this societal problem head on. We know commercial interests will not, so we must act.

Mr. President, I would like to get the attention of the distinguished majority leader. Pending that, what brings this Senator to the floor is the headlines of the morning paper: ``Deficit Predictions Soar with Bush Stimulus Plan.''

The economists from Standard & Poor's is quoted as saying:

I don't think it's a near-term concern.

Then, of course, as the story follows on page 6, the headline is to the effect: ``Economic Plan Could Lead to a Record Deficit.''

I wanted the distinguished majority leader to send a message to Karl Rove. I cannot get the Washington Post to listen. I have been in here regularly for a good 10 years saying we are running record deficits. Now they have the chief economists saying this could lead to a record deficit.

Let the record show on September 30, last year, at the end of fiscal year 2002, the CBO figure was $428 billion, a record deficit. Let's not come here in January and start talking about making records when we already have made a record. Everybody look up on their Internet, www.publicdebt.treas.gov, and you will see the public debt to the penny is already up some $155 to $159 or $160 billion. So we are already, in this year, $30 billion to $40 billion in the red ahead of last year.

Of course, with the so-called tax cut of revenues, the cut of revenues under the Bush plan, we are bound to have an over $500 billion deficit. That is why I wanted to get the distinguished majority leader's attention because history is repeating itself.

I remember 10 years ago President Bush I, as a result of Desert Storm, the gulf war success, was at all-time popularity. Then they looked economically with these headlines to a record deficit, and they had a $402 to $403 billion deficit. And the Governor of Arkansas beat him. That is exactly where we are headed this morning.

I don't know why it is that you cannot get the truth out of these figures. I know what the economists are thinking. You get the money in and spend it and hold what they call the on-budget deficit and off- budget and unified and public debt and government debt. That is all tommyrot. There is not a Governor in America with deficits asking to cut the revenues. Ask Governor Bush in Texas if he would recommend this out of the Governor's office in Austin, they would have run him out of the State.

Come to Washington and nobody listens. If he can carry a message, I think Karl Rove would listen because he is trying to reelect the President. ``Economic Plan Could Lead to Record Deficit,'' and he will be electing John Kerry. Maybe I can get their attention telling them that. Here it comes, 2 years ahead of time, the economic plan could lead to record deficit.

It is almost like working in the CIA here. It is top secret when you talk the truth. I think the axiom of Mark Twain is correct. He said: The truth is such a precious thing it should be used very sparingly. Of course, that is the media with respect to the truth on the amount of money we take in, on the amount of money we spend.

Let's go exactly back to 1992. At that particular time, Governor Clinton had just been nominated and invited Alan Greenspan, among others, down to Little Rock. Greenspan told the Presidential nominee: Look, you are coming up to Washington. You are not only going to have to cut spending, you are going to have to increase taxes. And Governor Clinton said: Are you serious? He said: That is exactly what the country needs. That is what you are going to do to get long-term investment. You are not going to get long-term investment with these deficits upon deficits, the debt going up, the interest costs going up, which I call interest taxes.

When the President says he is cutting taxes, he is actually increasing taxes. They cannot be avoided. They have to be paid. Interest costs run at the rate of $1 billion a day. This morning at 8 o'clock, the first thing the Government did is add another $1 billion and add it to the debt. The distinguished Presiding Officer will pick up my bill. Senator Thurmond and I have gotten by. We are home free economically. But the next generation coming along will have to pick up our bill.

In any event, President Clinton came to town. We submitted the plan, and we cut billions of spending, we raised taxes, and for the next eight years had the best economy we have ever had. The Senator from Tennessee, the distinguished majority leader, if I could get his attention. I ask my distinguished friend from Tennessee, I know you will see Karl Rove, and I want him to see he is leading his distinguished President into the same trap that Bush and I got led into. When you see these stories, Senator, to the effect that the economic plan could lead to record deficits, and they are quoting the chief economists of Standard & Poors, that is exactly where we were in 1992.

President Bushsea dpwm I was the most popular President after that Desert Storm you could possibly find. And within a year's time, the economy was at a $400 billion deficit. The young Governor from Arkansas beat him, and this is what we have right now when you see the economic world saying there will not be any investment, when they are saying they will have record deficits.

I'd be delighted.

I don't go with percentages, I go with reality. The reality is that the interest costs continue to go up.

You like that, is that right?

Well, if that is the way they want to run the Government, tell President Bush to go back down----

I yield.

You don't want to jump on Ken Lay this morning. As the new majority leader, heavens above, I thought we got past Ken Lay. Now you want to jump on the poor fellow. Come on. I don't know, I think they are a little addled over there.

What happens is, if the distinguished majority leader can tell me of any Governor in America with deficits who is running around talking about the percentage of his GDP--they would run Governor Bush out of Austin, TX, if he came out with that nonsense. But he comes up here and gets credibility. They have a drive on for dividend tax cuts that could not possibly help anybody until, of course, the election year. That is a Karl Rove instrumentality and strategy if there ever was. We understand that. But then--Karl will understand this--you are not going to be running on the talk shows with the President of the United States talking about the percentage of the GDP. We have to pay the bills. And what happens is, after President Bush came to town, we did raise taxes on Social Security. We raised taxes on gasoline. We raised income taxes. We couldn't get--Mr. President, the Presiding Officer should understand--we couldn't get a single Republican vote. And Vice President Gore had to come in here and break the tie in this body.

So it happened at that time the other Senator from Texas, Senator Gramm of Texas, said: You folks raise taxes on Social Security, and they will be hunting you Democrats down in the street and shooting you like dogs. That is in the Congressional Record.

Now that they have the White House, the House and the Senate, has any Republican asked that the increase in Social Security taxes be canceled? Oh, no. They are not interested in saving Social Security. They give you the words, but like John Mitchell says: Watch what we do, not what we say. They will say Social Security, but they will not come back and reduce the Social Security tax. They just couldn't think of it 10 years ago, and they have not been able to think otherwise for the past 10 years.

We had the best 8 years of economic expansion, investment, and everything else, with the raising of taxes during the 1990s. And we are back into the same situation where we have already got a record deficit as of the end of the last fiscal year. The fiscal year 2002 ended on September 30 of last year with a $428 billion deficit. We are running $159 billion in the red already this year. You are already at $587 billion. That is approaching $600 billion in stimulus. That is stimulating the economy, money that you do not have, money that you have to go out and borrow--for which you are not going to pay back. We have had the most stimulative economic program that you could think of for 15 months, and it hasn't worked. The economy is worse.

Why? On account of voodoo II. President Reagan started this nonsense of what you do is cut revenues, cut taxes, and therefore increase your revenues. We went from less than a $1 trillion debt before Reagan. We had 200 years of history, all the wars, and we had not reached $1 trillion in debt. Then we started this charade, which is all for the campaign and not for the country, because everybody can get reelected on cutting taxes.

President Reagan said: Cut the taxes, cut the revenues, and we will grow out of it. As a result, we had the economic downturn in 1987, and we have had the economic downturn in 2001 with the tax cuts.

Vice President Bush under Reagan called it voodoo. Now, young President Bush is giving us voodoo II, and young President Bush recommends voodoo III.

Record deficits? Let me describe it so you can add it up and then subtract it. If you take all the deficits from 1945 up until 1976, 30 years, take the deficits of President Truman, President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, President Johnson, President Nixon, President Ford-- take 30 years of all the deficits, the deficits of World War II, the Korean war, the war in Vietnam--take all of those deficits, add them up, and you will come to $358 billion over the 30-year period. And in 1 year we have got $428 billion under this administration, and they still play the game.

The Washington Post will not print the truth. They absolutely refuse to do it. All the other papers and everything else--I have gotten a few articles from time to time, but very few--just scattered, little squibs or anything else of that kind. What you end up doing, you have already got a record deficit. You are going to have record interest costs. We are going to war and immediately the cost of fuel is going up, the interest costs are going up, and we, instead of paying $1 billion a day, $360 billion or $365 billion a year in interest costs, we are going over $400 billion a year in debt. That $400 billion is just absolute waste, for nothing. We have to spend it each year. We come in here, but we are playing the political game. That is why this Senator is on the floor. I have been in the game 50 years. I never thought the Government would be turned into a campaign office.

No one is concerned around here about the needs of the country. It is the needs of the campaign and the media. Jefferson spoke it best when he said: As between a free government and a free press, give me the latter. He knew as long as the free press would tell the truth to the American people, the people, through their representatives, would reflect the needs of the country. But that is not what the media does. It is a spectator sport. It is who is running and who is not running, who is elected and who is not elected, who may be elected and not be elected. They are not paying attention to needs. They are just like pollsters--what the polls show. No, I don't have any cosponsors for VAT, a value-added tax. But we ought to institute this, before the war.

It is not the Volunteer Army going to war in Iraq, it is the United States of America, the country, going to war. That is why I put in the draft with Representative Charlie Rangel over on the House side. We need a sense of sacrifice and commitment and togetherness in this country. But all we have is partisan politics for the next campaign, and the media generates it. All the talk shows, ``Firing Line,'' ``Crossfire,'' ``Talk Back''--whatever they call those particular programs--they all offset each other, and they are supposed to make news. You can't get this printed. You cannot get the truth of how much came in and how much went out in any fiscal year.

The truth is, by section 21 of the Greenspan Commission report in 1983, they said: Set aside a surplus in trust for the baby boomers in the next century. And we are now in the next century. There is no problem with Social Security if we adhere to it. It took me some 7 years to get it done.

George Herbert Walker Bush, on November 5, 1990, signed into law section 13301 of the Budget Act. It says: Thou shalt not spend Social Security on anything other than Social Security.

Today we are spending Social Security trust funds on anything and everything but Social Security. That is what is happening. We would have $1.3 trillion banked up, ready to go. There would be no privatized Social Security and all the problems we are going to solve in Social Security. They solve the political problem here in this body. It is politics. They all voted for it.

President Bush I signed it into law. But they don't adhere to it.

So I have another little amendment. In addition to paying for the war, I have one where the Secretary of Treasury has to certify that, in order for the tax cut to take effect, the government does not spend Social Security. I want to see how they vote on that. Any and all tax cuts, whether they have capital gains, dividends, marriage penalty, income--whatever they want to think of--let them pass it, but let it not take effect unless they can certify that it does not cost Social Security. Let's see how they vote on that.

(Mr. CHAFEE assumed the chair.)

They cannot run around here--everyone, to a man, every Republican, every Democrat, says: I want to save Social Security. But then they come around and continually spend it, and the American people wonder why.

So the truth is, the economic plan ``could lead'' to a record deficit?

The economic plan has led to a record deficit. The distinguished Presiding Officer should have been here. Of course, he couldn't because his distinguished father had the seat. But it was back in the 1980s. I recommended a value-added tax at that time. We had a hearing. I will have to get the gentleman's name from Holland--Dr. Cnossen. He was the Dutch expert who had written the value-added tax for Japan and Canada and helped update it with the United Kingdom. He testified. We needed the money. As we were going out of the Finance Committee room, John Chafee turned to Lloyd Bentsen, the chairman. This was the Finance Committee. He said, Lloyd, if we had a secret ballot, we would pass that out unanimously. That was almost 15 years ago.

We had been running those deficits until we got into the 1990s, and we increased the taxes. We increased taxes on income. We increased taxes on gasoline. We increased taxes on Social Security and all of that. We had over a $400 billion deficit in 1992 when President Bush One left office. We brought it down in the early part of President Bush Two. We got it into the black. But then we passed the tax cuts. Voodoo Two. President Bush One was Vice President. He called it voodoo. He was right.

This idea of cutting revenues and increasing revenues at the same time is bologna. Everybody knows it. We know from hard experience. Under President Reagan, under President Bush Two now, the Voodoo Two. Now we have before us the economic plan Voodoo Three. When will we ever learn? That was when I came to town. That was the song they were singing during Vietnam. ``When will we ever learn?''

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Truth in Tuna Labeling Act of 2003. This act would amend the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act by reinstating an important consumer provision that had been a part of U.S. law since 1990. The provision in this bill would ensure our consumers that tuna fish sold in the United States that is labeled ``dolphin safe'' in fact was caught in a way that will not harm dolphins.

My colleague Senator Boxer and I believe that restoring the original ``dolphin-safe'' standard is necessary after a recent--and surprising-- decision by the Secretary of Commerce that would now allow tuna caught by chasing and encircling dolphins to be deemed ``safe'' for dolphins.

The ``dolphin safe'' label came about as an entirely voluntary consumer label. It was created in reaction to public outrage about fishing methods specific to the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, ETP, where dolphins that swim with schools of yellowfin tuna were intentionally encircled by purse seine tuna vessels and killed in fishing operations. Hundreds of thousands of dolphins died as a result of this practice over the years. A massive consumer boycott of tuna was launched. The U.S. tuna industry stepped up to the plate and voluntarily committed to abandon this ``encirclement'' practice. This commitment is what the 1990 ``dolphin safe'' labeling provision recognized. Since that time, the U.S. fishing fleet has not used the encirclement method, and has stopped fishing in the ETP entirely.

In 1997, the act was amended after conclusion of an international dolphin protection agreement among many ETP tuna fishing nations. The change would allow the Secretary of Commerce to consider whether a modified encirclement method could qualify for the dolphin safe label. But, there were those who strongly questioned that any encirclement method could be safe, and a condition of agreeing to this charge was that there would be a scientific study to ensure there would be no adverse impact on the dolphin populations. The amended law directed the Secretary of Commerce to make his decision based on the scientific study.

The deadline for making this decision came at the end of last year. The Secretary had to find that encirclement had no significant impact on dolphins in order to change the standard to allow tuna caught by this method to call itself ``dolphin safe.'' Well, the National Marine Fisheries Service study found that:

concerns remains that the practice of chasing and encircling

dolphins somehow is adversely affecting the ability of

depleted stocks [of dolphins in the eastern Tropical Pacific]

to recover.

Yet, on December 31, 2002, the Secretary of Commerce made a remarkable finding, saying that despite these stated scientific concerns about chasing and encircling dolphins, there would be ``no significant adverse impact'' on dolphin populations. As a result, they weakened the labeling standard, allowing tuna caught by encircling and chasing dolphins to be sold as ``dolphin safe.'' Mr. President, this decision did not follow the intent of Congress, which was to base this decision on the science alone. I was particularly concerned about a report in the New York Times this week that scientific studies on dolphin stress were discontinued by NMFS due to political pressure on this very issue. I hope and trust that is not the case, and I am sure we will get to the bottom of this in Committee hearings. But until these scientific questions are sorted out, we need to restore the standard that was in place prior to the decision.

My own interest in this issue has always been threefold: to ensure sound conservation of marine mammals, to provide consumers with the information they need when purchasing tuna, and ensure U.S. tuna fishermen a level playing field on which to compete. This bill is consistent with this philosophy. It sets forth an even-handed measure that gives consumers the straight story. In addition, any country can export tuna to the United States. But to get a specially authorized ``dolphin safe'' label on the can, they must fish in a dolphin safe way. Quite simply, anyone who wants to use the specific ``dolphin safe'' label needs to follow the same standards. That's as fair as you can get.

I understand that there may be additional ways we can help restore the dolphin populations of the ETP, including through international action, and I look forward to discussing those ideas. But this is a simple provision that we can surely all agree upon. It says if you want to label your tuna ``dolphin safe,'' you can't harm dolphins. The American consumer wants and deserves clarity when they purchase tuna. I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure we get to that result.

I commend our distinguished friend from Illinois. He has brought into sharp focus our dilemma with respect to the prime initiative of President Bush with respect to education.

I just finished a column for the local newspaper relative to symbols versus substance. You will find our Republican colleagues very strong on symbols but very weak on substance itself.

Let me ask the question, rhetorically, of course: What Governor, what mayor--all of us are facing these deficits--is cutting taxes in the face of these deficits? With voodoo? In other words, all you have to do to fix the deficit is cut your revenues. We heard this under President Reagan, and Vice President Bush called it voodoo. We heard all you needed to do was to cut taxes and the people would have so much money they would spend and everything else. We would have consumer demand. You would have sales tax revenues. You would have income tax revenues, they would all increase, and we would just grow out of a deficit.

At that time Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, Bush No. 1, called it voodoo.

We just had, last year and the year before, of course, voodoo II. A tax cut of $1.3 trillion plus interest costs $1.7 trillion. We are cutting the revenues and at the same time in the 4 years, and I want my colleagues to check the record and mark it down, the defense budget has gone in the last a little over 3, nearer 4 years from 1998 until now, from $271 billion to at least $371 billion. It will probably be nearer $386 billion. We have increased defense costs $100 billion. We have increased health costs $107 billion, when you look at Medicare and Medicaid and the veterans. But that does not include the community health centers or child health care, of course. So we spend another $200 billion there. We have increased agriculture, farm subsidies another $35 billion.

While we are increasing the spending that both sides of the aisle support--health care, defense, and agriculture, some $235 billion--and then we cut the revenues $1.7 trillion, in voodoo, and we end up with a deficit. We are just like the States. Only there is no serious purpose up here for the needs of the country. It is only for the needs of the campaign.

We have been using this Congress and the White House to campaign. The heck with the country. Despite having just completed one election, we're already looking at the next election. And the blooming media has gone along with us. They treat politics as a spectator sport, where they want to know who is up, who is down, who is announcing, who is quitting, who is doing this, and who is doing that. You can't get their attention on paying the bill.

As a result, the debt has soared to $6.3 trillion. We will be debating next month about increasing the debt limit. I want to see how many of my colleagues will vote for that. They have increased the debt by cutting all the revenues, increasing all the spending, and saying: I am against the Government, the Government is too big, the Government is not the solution, the Government is the problem.

I have sent to the desk a value-added tax. I want to increase taxes. I am sober. I am experienced. I got a triple A credit rating back in 1959 for the little State of South Carolina. I know what you have to do to pay the bill. I have been the chairman of our Budget Committee up here in the National Government, in the Senate. I can tell you, this is about my third try for a value-added tax.

My bill will be referred to the Finance Committee. I know revenue measures under the Constitution derive in the House of Representatives. But I know also that we had a hearing back in the 1980s when we had this voodoo. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas was chairman of that committee. I brought Dr. Cnossen, the Hollander expert. He testified, because he knew he had helped the United Kingdom. He had written a value-added tax for Japan, for Canada--every industrialized country in the world save the United States has a value-added tax. That is one of the big deficiencies we have in international trade.

They have a 15 percent to 17 percent advantage with their VAT. We have the disadvantage. When Dr. Cnossen testified, as they were leaving the room--I will never forget--former Senator John Chafee turned to Lloyd, the chairman, and he said, ``Lloyd, if we had a secret ballot we would vote it out of this committee unanimously.''

We needed the money to balance the budget. We tried with Gramm- Rudman-Hollings and had a temporary restraint on the Federal budget. But then instead of a prompter, a sword to prompt fiscal responsibility, it was used as a shield. We needed to take extreme action. But we didn't take it, and Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was out by 1992. Bush I was running a $400 billion deficit and lost office to the Governor of Arkansas.

Let's get to the Governor of Arkansas. When Clinton got nominated, his friend Erskine Bowles from Charlotte got together business leaders and market experts. They went down to Little Rock. Along with them was Alan Greenspan. Greenspan told then-Governor Clinton--he said, When you come to Washington you are going to have to not only cut spending, you are going to have to increase taxes.

Clinton said, Are you serious?

He said, The country needs it. We are not going to have any investment, we are not going to have any jobs, until the Government starts paying down the debt.

And paying down the debt was the 8-year chant on the floor of the Senate. You can't hear it now. You can't hear it now, about paying down the debt. You have to have tax cuts and so forth. One side says let's have, I don't know, a $700 billion, $800 billion, $900 billion

tax cut. The other one says, no, only $200 billion or $300 billion. We are back into the ying and the yang. We had that under voodoo I, under Bush II, year before last, when he said he wanted $2.3 trillion in tax cuts. The Democrats come around and said $900 billion and we compromised at $1.3 trillion and with interest costs $1.7 trillion. That is what we are on course to do.

Politicians go on the weekend shows chanting, I am for the rich, you are for the poor, the ying and yang, and it is all campaign applesauce. It is not for the good of the country.

I am telling you what we need to do is pay for the war. We have a President, a Commander in Chief who says, look, I am going to send you to get killed in Iraq, or maybe North Korea, or wherever he is headed. He is going to ask you to fight and sacrifice, but we are not going to pay for it. We are going to have to run deficits. In past wars we ran deficits, but we paid for it at the particular time.

What really happened? If you take all of the deficits for the last 30 years--right after World War II--under Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford--you take the sum total of all those deficits. It is $358 billion.

We just finished the fiscal year--one year under Bush II--which does not include the cost of the real war. It was only an excursion in Afghanistan. The Congressional Budget Office says the excursion in Afghanistan and homeland security amounts to $35 billion at the most. But in one year we have run a deficit of $428 billion. And to what do we owe this amount? Guess what. We had a stimulus--I want everybody to hear this--a stimulus of $428 billion in the last fiscal year. We are already $159 billion in the red the first 3 months of this fiscal year.

Added together, you have a $587 billion stimulus in the last 15 months. It hasn't worked. We are getting worse and worse. There is not going to be financial investment as long as we continue on this course. It is absolutely reckless to talk about whether any kind of a dividend can do it, or whether a marriage penalty can do it, or whatever else. They have to come around and argue about double taxation and everything else of that kind. We need to do both. We need to cut the spending and we need to increase the revenues. To accomplish this goal, we must have a value-added tax.

I can tell you here and now that it will take a year to get this 1 percent value-added tax up and running. It will take a year to get it the administration worked out, and to get the different businesses to change around their computers and for the IRS to institute it. And when we do it will get about $35 or $40 billion, and we will begin a modest effort to pay for whatever war, whether it is a domestic war, an Iraqi war, a North Korean war, or some of the 14 peacekeeping operations.

I can tell you now the military is stretched. That Reserve crowd that flies the C-17s in my backyard have been there since September 12, 2001. If they made $60,000 or $70,000 in private life, they are down now to $35,000 at the most. They cannot pay their rent. It is the same way with the National Guard. They are being called up everywhere in these particular cases.

We need to come to grips with what we are doing and cut out the campaigning and start looking at the needs of the country. Specifically, every Senator says we are not going to spend Social Security. President Bush, in February the year before last, when he submitted his message to the Congress said: I am setting aside $2.6 trillion for Social Security.

We have that, and more. In the law, it says: You shall not spend the Social Security surplus on anything other than Social Security. That is section 13301, recommended in section 21 of the Greenspan Commission. I dropped in a bill that requires the Secretary of the Treasury to certify that if there is a deficit there cannot be a tax cut. That tax cut--whatever they pass in this pandemonium, pell-mell rush for reelection--whatever tax cut they pass will not take effect until that on-budget surplus or on-budget deficit is zero.

That is the test of not using Social Security moneys. I want to keep them honest. I have already introduced it as a bill. It won't be a surprise. I had it all ready last year. We couldn't even debate the budget last year. We were criticized on the Democratic side of the aisle for not bringing up the budget. But I say bring it up and we will get the votes and find out whether they really want to protect Social Security because they have been spending it on any and everything but Social Security. Under section 21 of the 1983 Greenspan Commission report, it said set these funds aside in trust for the baby boomers. There is nothing wrong with Social Security except how they spend it. Now we owe the Social Security trust fund $1.3 trillion because we have been spending it on any and everything other than Social Security.

Let us not double talk the electorate. Let us remember to tell the truth to the American people. But I can tell you the bottom line is there is a $428 billion deficit for 2002, and we are $159 billion already in the red in first 3 months of 2003--in the last 15 months we have $600 billion of stimulus money that hasn't stimulated the economy. Another $30 billion or $40 billion a year is not going to stimulate it.

So we are whistling ``Dixie.'' We are doing this not for the country but for campaigns.

I want to say one more word with respect to the economy. We were having a hearing, and the distinguished Senator from Kansas talked about Boeing and how they just lost some 10,000 jobs. I reminded him that since NAFTA, we have lost 55,200 textile jobs. The Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Rockefeller, reminded us how we lost the steel industry. We can go right on down. We have 6.3-percent unemployment in my little State of South Carolina. We are not manufacturing anything. We have exported the industrial backbone of the United States. What we have is not free trade. Now the Senator from Kansas understands that it is competitive trade.

There are all kinds of subsidies. There is a standard of living. We require before you open up any manufacturing, you have to have clean air, clean water, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, plant closing notice, parental leave, safe machinery, safe working places--go right on down the list--the highest standard of living. You can go to Mexico for 58 cents an hour, and you can go to China for less than that. They are leaving Mexico to go to China. They are all talking about free trade. Nothing is free. It is competitive.

We have to rebuild the economic manufacturing capacity and strength of the United States. We need jobs. We are not going to have any jobs until we get a competitive trade policy. Otherwise we are not going to have any investment long-term because what we are doing is increasing interest on taxes. You cannot avoid it. The interest costs for the debt is growing at $1 billion a day right now. If we go to war, oil costs are going up, and interest costs are going up. Rather than $365 billion, interest costs are going to be up to $400 billion to $500 billion for just carrying the charges--for the privilege of campaigning and the politicians looking out for their reelection and not for the country.

I am sorry to say this. But that is the truth.

I see others are now ready to speak. I will speak at length otherwise with respect to the draft. There is no sense of sacrifice in this country. Our friend, Charlie Rangel, over on the House side, has put in the draft bill. In the beginning, I was opposed to the creation of an all volunteer force. So I put the draft bill in the Senate three other times. And I put it in now a fourth time day before yesterday because there has to be a sense and a feel of shared sacrifice. Don't come and tell us we have a strong economy, and I am sending you to get killed; and, this is a wonderful thing. We have to have more confidence in our commander in chief. He simply cannot just go to flag factories, get his sound bite early in the morning, rat-a-tat-tat sound bite, have two fundraisers at night, and let the country go to--you know what--in a hand basket.

That is what is going on. We have to sober up. We have to pay for the war. There has to be a shared sacrifice and sense of it in this country. I think the country is ready, but the Government is not.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous that following the remarks of the distinguished Senator from Illinois I be recognized.

Mr. President, we have a whole list of every senator, and every candidate in last year's election, all coming out and saying we won't touch Social Security. The President of the United States promised Congress in his first address to a Joint Session in February 2001 that all Social Security surplus money will be budgeted for Social Security and Social Security only.

Now that everyone is talking about cutting taxes, I do not want to forget the promises made on Social Security. I want to hold everyone to their word, because that is what the American people who depend on Social Security want as priority one. So, today, I am introducing a bill that says if the Treasury Secretary of the United States determines that if on October 1, 2003, there is a Federal on-budget deficit, future reductions in income tax rates will be suspended. Once the deficit no longer exists, the tax reductions can be put in place again.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to do away with tax cuts, so long as you can pay for them. The purpose of this Act is simply to ensure that no Social Security surpluses be used to pay for any further tax cuts. I want to make sure Social Security will be around when everyone retires.

So I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass this and make Social Security secure once and for all.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the National Defense Rail Act. This legislation is of vital importance to rail transportation, it provides funding for railroad security, Amtrak, investment in both freight and passenger rail, and the development of high speed corridors throughout the country.

We have modified the security provision to reflect the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, otherwise, this is the same bill that the Commerce Committee reported last April by a vote of 20 to 3. I am joined by twenty five of my colleagues in introducing this bipartisan legislation. It is critical that the Senate take this bill up, and pass it, to ensure that our railroads are secure and we have adequate investment in both Amtrak and the development of high speed rail corridors to move us into the future.