Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, would you work for an employer who told you he was going to cut your pay next year 4\1/2\ percent? Would you work for an employer who told you he was going to cut your pay every year for the next 6 years 4\1/2\ percent? Would you work for an employer who told you he was going to cut your pay every year for the next 6 years 4\1/2\ percent and your costs were going up 21 percent? Of course you would not.

Our seniors are already finding it hard to find a doctor who will take a new Medicare patient. What a hollow promise Medicare is if you cannot choose your own doctor. Only you, Mr. President, can require bureaucratic minds to take the actions necessary, fair and appropriate to break through the barriers to a destructive, unworkable, and outdated law. Only you, Mr. President, can give the order for administrative actions to allow budget-neutral repeal of the old SGR law and adoption of a modern pay-for-performance bill so you can fulfill the progressive vision that you have had that we all share of a Medicare program that can control costs by improving the quality of health care delivered to our seniors. I call on you to act, Mr. President.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Tax Relief Extension Act. Let me make absolutely clear what this bill does. The bill will prevent automatic tax increases on millions of Americans and their families.

Unless Congress acts, individuals will pay higher taxes on their savings; businesses will lose valuable incentives to provide research in the United States; small businesses will lose the ability to expense new equipment, essential to the support of new employees.

These are all benefits taxpayers have today, and our bill simply preserves them. The bill does not increase taxes. The bill does not reduce taxes. The bill merely preserves the current tax policy that has driven 4.3 percent growth and is creating millions of new jobs.

According to the IRS in my home State of Connecticut, there are 550,000 taxpayers who receive dividend income; 153,000 of those have incomes below $30,000 a year. Right now they pay 5 percent taxes on dividend incomes. In 2008 low-income taxpayers will pay zero taxes on dividend income. If we fail to act, however, they will pay taxes as high as 25 percent.

A widow living on $30,000 a year could see her tax bill increase by $1,200 a year. That would be wrong. This bill needs to be passed. It deserves to be passed. It also needs to be passed and deserves to be passed because it extends and enhances the R&D tax credit. At a time when other nations are providing or have provided permanent and richer incentives for research, we need to recognize the job-producing benefits of this tax credit.

Mr. Speaker, we remain a world leader in patents and discoveries, but other nations are closing in. Advances in technology and innovation are what drive growth and ultimately create higher standards of living for all of us.

We need to ask ourselves, do we want the next major scientific breakthrough to happen in Germany or China? Do we want other countries to be the leaders in the patents for the next generation of technology?

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention incentives for small business expensing. Small business is the engine of our economy. Our bill allows small businesses to immediately expense up to $100,000 of equipment. When we first adopted this provision, we saw investment in equipment skyrocket, go right straight up. Lowering the cost of capital encourages small businesses to invest in machines, trucks, and other equipment and hire new people. With 25 million small businesses accounting for two of three new jobs created, expensing supports these small businesses.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, Connecticut seniors are signing up for the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, and many are saving hundreds and thousands of dollars.

The CHOICES bus visited the senior citizens center in Plainville, Connecticut, and Thomas and Margaret Bernatchy spoke with a trained counselor. Mrs. Bernatchy takes many drugs, and it costs the couple $7,000 a year. After discussing their needs with the trained counselor, Mr. Bernatchy signed himself and his wife up, and they will save $5,000 a year.

Mrs. Anita Willequer who also lives in Plainville was attending exercise classes at the senior center and decided to pop in on the Medicare CHOICES counseling session. She spends only $55 a month on drugs, but she will save $500 a year. ``This is a tremendous savings,'' she said. ``I was glad I asked about it. I hope it helps a lot of people.''

With each passing day, more and more seniors are talking with Medicare-trained advisors, getting their questions answered, signing up for savings. Help your seniors sign up for savings.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to John Monagan, who represented the fifth district of Connecticut from 1959 to 1973. Mr. Monagan passed away on October 23rd at the age of 93.

John was born and raised in Waterbury, the largest city in the fifth district. He went on to Dartmouth college where he was an honors student in French literature. Upon graduation he attended Harvard Law school and in 1937 he received a law degree.

During his 7 terms in Congress, he chaired the House Government Operations subcommittee that helped uncover irregularities in the Federal Housing Administration's financing of the Housing Renewal program. As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee he led mission study trips to Soviet satellite countries and worked to improve trade relations with Latin American countries.

John Monagan had a passion for public service that started before and continued after his years in the House. In Waterbury he immersed himself in public service, as an alderman, a finance commissioner and eventually as Mayor. As president of the U.S. Association of former members of Congress, he was known to give lectures on the importance of public service. His dedication to serving others is inspirational quality that many of us wish to pass onto the next generation.

Mr. Speaker, we thank and pay our respects to John Monagan for his years of service to Connecticut and the Nation.

Mr. Speaker, 42 million seniors can now sign up for the new voluntary Medicare drug benefit.

Yesterday I was with a senior in my district, Shirley Rabinowitz, who takes 17 different prescription drugs. Let me say that again: 17 different prescription drugs. She takes drugs for diabetes. She takes drugs for her heart condition. She lives with a number of chronic illnesses, and so she takes 17 different prescriptions. But like so many seniors, she has no retiree coverage, no Medicaid coverage, no State plan assistance, in fact, no prescription drug coverage at all. And her out of pocket expenses are huge.

So she wondered if the new Medicare plan would help her, and she went to an adviser with the Triple Area Agency on Aging and she learned in 30 short minutes that she can save $4,000 a year. Let me say that again: $4,000 a year.

Mr. Speaker, this new drug program is a huge benefit to our seniors. Do not discourage them from getting the advice they need that is readily available to save them lots of money.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to a great friend and a gentleman who gave the gift of music freely, enthusiastically, and successfully throughout his life: my friend Lyle Russell Cedric ``Skitch'' Henderson. Skitch passed away on November 1 at his home in New Milford at 87.

Skitch was born in England, and moved to the United States in the 1930's. In the early years, he eked out a living as pianist, playing vaudeville and movie music in Minnesota and Montana road houses. His big break came in 1937 when he filled in for an ailing accompanist for an MGM promotional tour featuring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. When the tour wrapped up in Chicago, he used the original pianist's ticket and went to Hollywood. There he met Bob Hope and played piano for Bob on the Pepsodent Show. He became friends with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby and lent them his musical expertise. He continued on to win a Grammy award as a conductor. His many remarkable accomplishments reflect his diverse talents and character.

During World War II, Skitch like many others put his life on hold for the greater cause. He flew both the Royal Air Force and, after becoming an American citizen, the United States Army Air Corps. This fostered Skitch's love for airplanes and flying, which became a lifelong passion.

Skitch may be best known from his days as the bandleader for Steve Allen's ``Tonight Show,'' which brought Skitch into the nation's living rooms every night. Skitch not only served as bandleader for Allen, but for Jack Paar and Johnny Carson as well, reflecting his rich personality and breathe of talents.

Not resting on his laurels, Skitch founded the New York Pops in 1983. He wanted to share his passion for music by bringing the more accessible symphonic pops fare to a broader audience. He led free New York Pops concerts in the city's parks each summer, so that people of all backgrounds could experience the majesty of hearing a world-class orchestra perform live. The New York Pops is now the largest independent symphonic pops orchestra in the United States.

Beyond his career as a performer, Skitch helped thousands of New York City's school children gain new possibilities in life through music. He personally visited classrooms throughout the city to encourage children in a love of music and learning. Recently, he was appointed to be a distinguished Professor of Music at Western Connecticut State University and only a few weeks ago, with that twinkle in his eye, excitedly shared with me his vision of this great opportunity to develop the talents of local students and mold them into a first rate orchestra.

I extend my heartfelt condolences to Skitch's wife Ruth. The couple married on February 7, 1958 and since then, they have not only been partners in marriage, but Ruth has been a partner in Skitch's many endeavors and is currently President of the New York Pops.

Skitch Henderson brought music, beauty, and hope to millions. It is my privilege to rise to honor him for enriching the lives of people of all ages over many decades throughout America. Few leave such a magnificent legacy. A life well lived, my friend!

Mr. Speaker, I was an early and fervent supporter of providing health benefits to families on welfare as they made the difficult transition to work, often to entry-level jobs not providing basic care for their children.

So I appreciate the need for this bill for welfare recipients and for premium subsidies for our elderly and disabled citizens on very low incomes, but I do strongly object to the way these benefits are paid for in this bill. I regret

that offsets I suggested were not adopted instead of this flat ban on ED drugs.

Getting Congress involved in medical treatment decisions by limiting the availability of any category of prescription drugs sets a terrible precedent.

Congress has repeatedly recognized that we should not be in the business of developing or defining formularies. Congress tasked the United States Pharmacopoeia with developing the categories and classes of drugs to be covered by the new prescription drug plans, and we specifically tasked the P&T committees in every Medicare drug plan offered to our seniors and disabled citizens with the responsibility of assuring that the formularies were medically correct and not politically correct.

Furthermore, Medicare and Medicaid prescription drug plans have a number of tools at their disposal to ensure that ED drugs are not abused and could be covered only when prescribed for medically appropriate care.

Further, since they are not sold over the counter and must be prescribed by a physician, control is not difficult. Medicare covers many benefits in some situations and not others, and ED drugs would only be another such benefit. As for sex offenders, cross-checking with publicly available lists of these offenders is not difficult and could prohibit ED drugs from going to sex offenders at taxpayers' expense while preserving access to these drugs when medically necessary for all disabled and senior men who are not sex offenders.

Mr. Speaker, ED drugs are covered for Federal employees and Members of Congress. They are covered by the VA, and they are very useful in treating post-traumatic stress disorder. Why would we treat our seniors and people with disabilities worse than we treat all Federal employees and veterans? If my colleagues oppose full access, surely Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries should at least have access to all medically necessary medications.

Medicare covers breast reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy or accidental injury. Medicare understands ``the importance of post- surgical psychological adjustment'' as women rehabilitate after a damaging cancer treatment or devastating injury.

Are men not entitled to such wholeness after prostate cancer treatment?

ED drugs help men who have lost sexual function as a result of medical conditions like prostate cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, or spinal cord injuries. Men need these medications not to enhance their lifestyle but to return them to normal, just like women need reconstructive surgery to return as close as possible to normal.

In fact, wholeness is so important that according to a University of Chicago study, 68 percent of men were willing to forego treatments that were more effective in eradicating prostate cancer in order to maintain sexual function. Why would we force men to choose between the most effective medical treatment and wholeness?

I could not agree more that we should ban ED drugs for sex offenders; but a flat ban on ED drugs for all seniors, low-income Americans, people with disabilities who have ED-related diseases or conditions is just plain discriminatory and wrong.

So, Mr. Speaker, while I respect the concerns of those who support a total ban on ED drugs, I hate to see Congress go down this path of political correctness. We must offer our seniors, our poor, and our people with disabilities medically correct health care plans.

The real answer to controlling the cost of Medicare and Medicaid is not micromanaging the programs, but driving forward the adoption of technology that will enable us to manage chronic illnesses proactively, reducing both the cost and suffering of hospitalizations and emergency department visits for our seniors and those disabled amongst us.

That much said, and with the hope that we will allow doctors to determine treatment protocols, I acknowledge our public responsibility to extend access to Medicaid benefits for welfare-dependent families and for premium subsidies for our very lowest-income seniors and people with disabilities and to provide unemployment compensation funding these States so desperately need.

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Deal) and his subcommittee for bringing forward this resolution, and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall) for introducing it, because it is extremely important to recognize the very thoughtful work of this administration in making the most complex and difficult change in payment systems that we have frankly ever legislated in any sector of Medicare payment policy.

They had to change both the way the government paid for the drugs and the way they paid for the physicians, and changing each system required the development of whole new information systems; and then they had to coordinate these in such a way that they actually came to the oncologists in the right amount at the right time. To ensure that, they developed the demonstration project that both will improve quality and also ensure that these payments together would maintain the access to oncology care that American seniors enjoy and Americans across the country enjoy.

We enjoy greater access to cancer treatment than the people of any other country. In making this much-needed, but complex, change in how we pay for that cancer care, this administration showed great medical understanding, great patient sensitivity, and great dedication to ensuring that access to cancer care would in no way be compromised while we reformed the way we paid for that care.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Deal) for a solid resolution and congratulate Members on a very difficult job. Very well done. I thank publicly Dr. McClellan and all his staff for their energy and dedication to this and for the staff of both committees who worked very hard to ensure that in different aspects of our jurisdiction we brought all of the knowledge we had developed in the course of developing these payment changes to the table to work with the administration. I thank the committee staff, as well as my own staff.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time. I want to congratulate the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) of the Committee on Ways and Means and also the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from California (Mr. Herger) for bringing a very important bill to the floor very promptly.

In spite of the comments of my friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), the ranking member of this subcommittee, TANF has reduced poverty among minority children in America more than any program ever adopted by Congress. It has been an enormous success in helping families get into the workforce, raise their incomes, and reduce the poverty level among children in our country.

So now to open TANF for those families devastated, devastated, by this natural disaster, is extremely important, because these are families now, like so many of our own children, living paycheck to paycheck, who have no paycheck and no assets. And that is today's problem. By bringing them immediately into TANF, they can get a paycheck. They can get cash assistance.

But, better than that, though nothing is better than that when you have no cash and you have a bunch of kids, but equally important is that it brings them into a system that is set up, that is structured, that is skilled, that is dedicated, that has people in it that know and understand it, who can help them with employment, who can help them with day care vouchers, who can give them transportation vouchers, who know what it takes to help a family get on its feet economically. And that is the challenge they face.

So this is a very important component of responding to the immediate needs of the families wiped out by this unprecedented, devastating hurricane.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that we are doing this right now. We are going to hold the States who open their TANF system to refugees harmless to the costs. We will be able to fund that from the contingency fund we have already put in place. We will be able to do this, meet immediate needs, and help those families to respond to opportunities like the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw) just mentioned.

This is exactly what we need right now. We cannot see the whole problem yet; and it would be irresponsible to do anything but use the resources already at our disposal, resources that are experienced, savvy, and directly meet the needs for both cash assistance and opportunity for these families to rebuild their lives and receive the services they need.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for this good piece of legislation, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Speaker, this is how we answer that little girl. We tell her the world that she is going to work in is going to be a world in which there will be better labor laws better enforced.

For the very first time ever, the International Labor Organization spent 1 year working with these countries to upgrade their labor laws, and, everyone agrees, their labor laws meet the core standards of the ILO. For the very first time ever, the ILO is going to be the enforcement mechanism to see that those laws are enforced as enforcement is always the weakness. Always the weakness.

Many of you voted for the Jordan Free Trade Agreement. Many of you voted for the Moroccan Free Trade Agreement. Not nearly as good of a body of laws in those countries, and the enforcement was: You must be making efforts towards; you must be striving to enforce. In this labor agreement, in CAFTA, the ILO will come in and review every 6 months and publicly report every 6 months: Are you implementing the plan?

Now, they have written the plan. You can see whether they will have implemented the plan, because it is laid out, how many inspectors, and so on and so forth. It is all detailed. They will be accountable for implementing those plans.

Those Presidents whom we met with were proud that they are upgrading their labor law and upgrading their enforcement. This is capacity- building. The very first Free Trade Agreement or trade agreement that focuses on capacity-building, building the ability of departments of labors within these governments to enforce domestic labor law which meets international labor standards, and the International Labor Organization is going to be there to oversee it, and we are putting money behind it. We are, and others are.

This is a unique labor agreement. It really, really pains me that there is so much ignorance about the details of this agreement. You sit with the people who negotiate an agreement, you sit with the economic ministers, you sit with the Presidents, and you get a concrete, tactical sense of the tremendous strides they have made through the agreement to improve new labor laws and enforcement capacity. This is not status quo; this is going to change their world and protect their workers.

Now, if in addition you care about fair trade, and you want to walk the walk of fair trade and not just talk the talk, then you better remember, their goods come in, no tariffs, no duties, no nothing into our country.

Do you not think our guys deserve the same right? To me that is fair trade. Level the playing field. Our products should have the same access their products have. And their people deserve the same respect our people do. They do not deserve a double standard.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3283. As one who advocated China's entry into the WTO, I am concerned and disappointed with China's passage of a law on government procurement that incorporates strong preferences for domestic goods and services, fostering discrimination against, for example, software companies that have made a substantial commitment to the development of the Chinese software industry. The combined effect of rampant software piracy and the proposed discriminatory government procurement regulations will create a nearly impenetrable barrier to U.S. software. This at a time when the trade deficit with China is at an all-time high.

Madam Speaker, I call on the Chinese Government to immediately enter into negotiations to accede to the agreement on government procurement of the WTO as they committed to 3 years ago and to suspend the implementation of its law on government procurement.

I urge my colleagues to vote overwhelmingly for this bill to send a very strong message to China on all the fronts the bill covers, not the least of which is government procurement. We have the chance to send a strong message and take strong action, and this bill will do it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the CAFTA agreement. Goods come from CAFTA countries into America absolutely duty free. Whether they are industrial, whether they are agricultural, no matter what goods they are, they come in duty free.

Our goods, when they go to their markets, suffer from the weight of heavy duties. So all this agreement does is drop the duties on our goods, drop the tariffs on American goods flowing into these markets.

It is a win for America on every single front. It is the status quo for the Central American nations. Why would they agree to it? Because it makes it permanent and because there are some two-way partnerships in this bill that are an advantage to these Central American nations, and to us.

We will be defeated by China in textiles if we do not modernize the partnership between the American yarn makers and the Central American textile companies.

As to the labor agreements, the labor portions of this agreement, I have gone into those in great detail over and over again. We have the best labor agreements we have ever had in any Free Trade Agreement, and the Democrats in this House have voted for those agreements overwhelmingly. It is a double standard, it is artificial, and it is unfair to vote against this agreement.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to take the time in opposition though I am not opposed to the amendment.

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

The business of the House moved more rapidly than I anticipated, and so I am asking the privilege of taking the time in opposition to this amendment, though I do not oppose it, just to stand in support of the Burton amendment.

In Danbury, one of the major cities in my district, there has been an influx of 10,000 illegal immigrants in the last 5 years, mostly from South America and many from Ecuador. The tragedy that we are a party to, by allowing these Mafia type traffickers to entice people into their web, is a tragedy for families, villages, and nations. These are Mafia type organized crime organizations. They have figured out how to make money from people's dreams and hopes. They rape, they pillage, they steal, they murder, they abandon. We need to know more about how we can use the intelligence resources and other resources of the United States to work more closely with the Ecuadorian government to stop this abusive trafficking and relieve small cities like Danbury of the terrible cost of a larger population of illegal residents.

These illegal immigrants are hard workers and hope only for a better life. But living the life of an illegal cannot fulfill their dreams, and it can cause tremendous problems in cities like Danbury, where services are taxed, taxpayers are overburdened, public health problems develop because these workers do not have health insurance and so on and so forth.

I traveled recently to Ecuador to gain a better understanding of the origins of the problems and spoke with the Ecuadorian immigration officials about the situation. They share our concerns with the sophistication of the organized criminals who are now profiting from human trafficking and capitalizing on the hopes of people who are merely seeking a better life. There is a way for our two countries to work together, not only to stop this trafficking, but to collaborate on local economic development projects to reduce the incentive to flee one's homeland. Microlending all kinds of things that we do routinely here in America and that we do in other places in the world, could provide the economic opportunity these people so desperately want right in their own country. Illegal immigration is not only dangerous and brutal for those involved but hard on American towns and cities and terrible for the little villages that are left behind in which grandparents are raising children and hopelessness forces painful, permanent separation.

I commend the gentleman on taking this step forward and working to stop human trafficking, which also creates the problems associated with illegal immigration in America. We have the resources to solve these problems if we focus thoughtfully on both the causes and the effects. The gentleman's amendment will start that process of focusing and will, I hope, lead to destroying the business of human trafficking and creating an economic development model built on the experience of both the United States and Ecuador, that will restore hope for Ecuadorians to their homeland.

I thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), the chairman of the committee, for allowing me to take the time in opposition to this amendment that I do not oppose.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the time of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe).

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Dominican Republic and Central American Free Trade Agreement and urge my colleagues to join me in its passage in the next week. Both the strength of our economy and the jobs available to our own people depend on our ability to gain access to new markets and offer products that are price competitive, and quality competitive. Without greater access to the global market, it is our people that pay the price. The DR-CAFTA agreement will, for the very first time, allow U.S. goods to flow into the Central American countries without tariffs, just the way Central American goods flow into America without tariffs. It merely levels the playing field.

Furthermore, it will allow us to modernize the partnership between the United States textile industry and the Central American countries. Through this partnership we can compete with China. If we lose this partnership and the opportunity to modernize it, then textiles will go to China. They will take jobs from the Central American countries and that will take jobs from America because this partnership uses entirely American yarn, and China is unlikely to do that. So not only would our goods flow into these Central American countries without tariffs, but by modernizing the textile partnership between the United States and the Central American nations we save jobs in both countries and keep ourselves competitive with China.

Finally, this agreement helps strengthen fledgling democracies and economies that at one time were the center of civil war, terrible unrest, terrible suffering and great poverty. Through the development of their democracies and their economies, their people are beginning to do better, and by supporting that growth we can stem both legal and illegal immigration from those nations, which we would like to do.

I strongly support CAFTA, as do the majority of producers of American products from manufactured products to agricultural products, because the agreement levels the playing field for workers by immediately reducing tariffs imposed on exports to Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. It zeros out many tariffs immediately, while others are reduced the first year by 80 percent. This is manufacturers, agriculture products, everything across the board.

Currently, imports from CAFTA countries enter the United States duty free, but of course our goods are not allowed to go back duty free. This is a great leveling of the playing field and will increase exports from the United States to the Central American nations.

It may surprise you to hear that Central American countries are my home State of Connecticut's largest export market for crops. Connecticut's dairy farmers will gain immediate duty free access to the Central American markets for dairy products, and all tariffs will be phased out over time. That is exactly why the American Farm Bureau has endorsed CAFTA.

Now there has been some discussion about the labor requirements, the labor provisions of CAFTA. In fact, this agreement has been roundly criticized by Members of this body who voted overwhelmingly for the agreement with Morocco and the agreement with Jordan. And yet this agreement is far tougher on labor standards and far stronger on enforcement.

I am proud to say that under this agreement, after a year's work between the Development Bank and the ILO to evaluate carefully these countries' labor laws and to upgrade those laws, to evaluate carefully their ability to enforce those laws and what had to be done to strengthen enforcement, after that year of work, all that work is embodied in this Central American agreement, the CAFTA agreement. Consequently, this agreement will enforce laws that meet the ILO standards in all these countries, 100 percent in most of them and in two of them there are constitutional provisions that essentially make it equivalent to 100 percent. So the labor laws meet high standards and through this agreement enforcement will meet high standards.

We not only commit money to those standards but we creatively approach for the first time the issue of enforcement. First of all, under the old agreement, if the Central American countries did not live up to their obligations to make progress in the area of labor laws, all we could do was completely cut off all trade agreements. That nuclear, that draconian option was never in the whole 22 years used. It did not work.

So in this agreement we have the right to levy stiff monetary fines, up to $15 million per year per violation; and if that does not work, we can take away their trade benefits. But meanwhile these fines will go into a special fund to be used with American oversight and American agreement to solve specific labor problems to strengthen specific enforcement measures and to make the lives of the workers in these countries better.

Not only do we have flexibility and enforcement and new funding from the penalty system, but our country has committed $180 million dollars to enforcement.

In sum the DR-CAFTA agreement will for the first time allow U.S. goods greater access to central American markets close to our country, allow us to modernize our textile partnership to compete directly with China, and help strengthen the fledgling democracies and economies of our southern neighbors which alone will stem immigration--legal and illegal--from those nations.