Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 2:30 p.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

committee on finance

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

select committee on intelligence

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 10, 2008, at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed hearing.

THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 757, H.R. 634.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid on the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 768, H.R. 3179.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read the third time, and passed, the motion to reconsider laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 589, which was submitted earlier today by Senator Stabenow of Michigan.

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, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 590, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 629, the nomination of Michael E. Leiter to be Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; that the nomination be confirmed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no other motions in order; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that any statements relating to the nomination be printed in the Record, and that the Senate then return to legislative session, without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Wednesday, June 11; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate proceed to a period for the transaction of morning business for up to 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first half and the Republicans controlling the final half. I further ask unanimous consent that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 3044, the Consumer-First Energy Act, and that the first 4 hours be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees and controlled in 30-minute blocks in an alternating fashion, with the majority controlling the first 30 minutes and the Republicans controlling the next 30 minutes; and that following the controlled block of time, Senators be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, I rise to address an environmental issue, an economic issue, and a moral issue. Future generations will look back on global warming as the defining issue of our time. Our children, their children, and their children will look back on this issue and judge us on how we confronted it.

If we treat global warming politically, as so many of the other side of the aisle did today, if we abdicate our responsibility, if we ignore reality, if we twiddle our thumbs as the destructive effects of global warming intensify, we will lose our chance to shape the future because, simply put, we will be squandering it.

I applaud Senator Boxer, the chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, a tireless advocate for clean air, safe drinking water, and healthy families.

This was not an easy vote. This entire week I have listened to the speeches on the Senate floor, and I have listened to my colleagues speak eloquently on the need for global climate change legislation. I fully agree with the environmental goals of this bill--mandatory caps, the science-based timeline. This, as I said, is the moral question of our generation. I have the utmost respect for my colleagues who have worked so long and so hard to craft this historic legislation and for environmental advocates in Ohio and across the country. I am 100 percent committed to passing a robust, mandatory cap-and-trade policy. However, while we have been debating climate policy, Ohioans have been getting bad news.

This has been a particularly tough week for my State. In the last 7 days, Ohioans learned that our State may soon lose another 10,000 jobs. Those are not just jobs. They are the building blocks, the foundation for individual achievement, family security, and community survivability. They are about health care, they are about opportunity, they are about sending kids to college, they are about admission to the middle class.

Now that foundation is crumbling--10,000 good-paying jobs in 1 week. Since 2001, Ohio has lost more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs.

We have, to be sure, a moral obligation to our planet. For me, that obligation stems from Scripture which makes each of us a steward of our planet, of this Earth. We also have an opportunity and obligation to Ohioans and

to all Americans. We have the opportunity and the obligation to write global warming policy that is sustainable, equitable, beneficial, both domestically and globally, both environmentally and economically. We can do that. We can write a bill to do that. We can write a law to do that or we can settle for a work that I believe is still in progress.

I cannot settle and could not settle a moment ago in my vote for this legislation because it needlessly may hurt my State because it fails to protect against what could be a policy that exports emissions rather than eliminating emissions.

I submitted five amendments to this bill that were designed to produce a final bill that would combat global warming without undermining American families, without hurting families from Galion to Gallipolis, from Cincinnati to Ashtabula. Unfortunately, after today's cloture vote, there was no opportunity to debate and vote on those amendments. Given the chance, I would have fought to redistribute the financial burden imposed by this bill so Ohio would receive a fair share, rather than the short end of the stick.

I would have fought to provide sufficient transition assistance for energy-intensive manufacturing so our Nation does not lose those crucial national-security oriented, in many cases, crucial jobs. I would have fought to ensure domestic manufacturers a level playing field with companies from countries without global warming requirements.

A plant shuts down in Steubenville or Lima, OH, a plant that has followed Ohio and national environmental law over the years, and moves to China. We lose our jobs, and emissions get even greater because the Chinese do not have the environmental laws we do. That is part of the problem with U.S. trade policy. That is another time for another speech and another day. But if we don't take this right step to ensure domestic manufacturers a level playing field with companies from countries without global warming requirements, we might as well throw a going-away party for the steel industry, the cement industry, the glass industry, aluminum industry, the chemical industry, for foundry after foundry after foundry in Ravenna, Chillicothe, Mansfield, and Marion. We might as well pray for a miracle when it comes to global warming because as we export those jobs to countries that have weak environmental laws, we will be exporting emissions so they come in quantities of twice as much from smokestacks in China than they come from smokestacks in Ohio.

I would have fought for greater capital investment in emerging green businesses and manufacturing. We need to go green to achieve our goals. We need to rebuild our manufacturing sector to remain a self-sufficient nation and the strongest economy on the planet.

We can pass legislation that can be a jobs legislation, energy legislation, environmental legislation if we do the right thing and encourage our companies and our investors to build solar panels and solar cells, to build fuel cells, to build wind turbines, to move forward on all the kinds of biomass energy production that we know how to do in this country.

Why wouldn't we invest in the research, infrastructure, job training, and the commercialization needed to secure our independence from foreign oil, to fight global warming, to revitalize our economy? Mr. President, why wouldn't we?

I would have fought for resources to help coal communities diversify their economies. If we ignore these communities, we breed poverty. Go with me to southeast Ohio and look at the number of people who are lining up in food pantries, lining up for food to get through the week, to get through the month, to get through the winter and now the spring, as most people in those families hold jobs, often full time, often part time. They don't pay enough because of what has happened to coal miners and what has happened to industry in southeast Ohio.

We, in moral terms and practical terms, cannot let that happen. If we ignore these communities, as I said, we breed more poverty. That is not a prediction, that is a fact.

I was not given the opportunity to offer my amendments. I will have the opportunity to push for legislation that capitalizes on our Nation's strengths, that leaves a legacy of which we can be proud for future generations.

We can do it, we must do it, and with Senator Boxer's leadership, we will do it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the goal of our trade policy should be to promote fair competition and lift up workers at home and abroad.

Americans support trade that allows responsible businesses to thrive, fueling good-paying jobs and a strong, resilient economy.

But wrong-headed trade pacts following the failed NAFTA-model have betrayed middle class families across the country, destabilizing our economy and destroying communities in rural and urban areas alike.

In my state of Ohio, more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs have been eliminated since 2001. Across the country, more than 3 million manufacturing jobs have been eliminated in that time.

Our failures to modernize our Nation's trade policy, to learn from our mistakes, and to respond to changing dynamics in the global arena, hurt communities like Toledo and Steubenville and Dayton.

That is why voters in my state of Ohio and across the country have sent a message loud and clear demanding a new direction, a very different direction, for our nation's trade policy.

Over the last 8 years, our approach to trade has been haphazard at best.

In the last 2 years, since voters elected candidates who support fair trade, Congress has reasserted itself in trade policy-making, with some improvements to proposed deals with Peru, Panama, Colombia, and South Korea.

We also have chosen not to grant President Bush a renewal of Fast Track.

But our approach to trade has not evolved from reactive to proactive. We have not forged a new approach to trade that is results-oriented, an approach focused squarely on the goals of economic strength, job creation, and U.S. self-sufficiency.

Not surprisingly, polls show that Americans reject current trade policy as misguided.

That is because it is.

It is time to learn from our mistakes.

It is time for a change. The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment, TRADE, Act, which Senator Dorgan, Senator Feingold, Senator Casey, Senator Whitehouse and I are introducing today, is a step towards that change.

This legislation will serve as a template for how to craft a trade agreement that works for workers, for business owners, for our country.

This legislation will mandate a review of all existing trade agreements and will require the President to submit renegotiation plans for those agreements before pursuing new trade agreements.

The TRADE Act will create a committee comprised of House and Senate leaders who will review the President's plan for renegotiation.

This bill spells out standards for future trade agreements, standards based on fostering fair competition, promoting good-paying jobs, and addressing unethical behavior by multinational corporations, including the exploitation of people and natural resources in developing nations.

Trade is an exchange that relies on the integrity of its participants. We must not trade away our fundamental belief in basic human rights and our responsibility to fight the kind of exploitation that threatens vulnerable peoples and vulnerable nations.

That is why our trade policy must not sidestep the impact of lax trade agreements and unethical corporations on developing nations.

The TRADE Act also sets out criteria for a new negotiating process-- one that would do away with the fundamentally-flawed Fast Track process and return power to Congress when considering our nation's trade pacts.

We take for granted our clean air, safe food, and safe drinking water. But these blessings are not by chance: they result from laws and rules that foster fair wages, protect the public health, and promote environmental stewardship.

Flawed trade policy accelerates the import of toxic toys, contaminated toothpaste, and poisonous pet food into this country.

It does not have to be this way.

We have a choice.

We can continue a race to the bottom in wages, worker safety, environmental protection, and health standards.

Or, we can use trade agreements to lift standards abroad--not threaten workers and consumers.

We can continue down the path of the failed NAFTA model, or we can write trade agreements that sustain and grow our Nation's manufacturing self-sufficiency, create good-paying jobs and reduce the trade deficit by providing fair and transparent market access.

We can forsake U.S. standards and U.S. values and ignore trade abuses in order to mass produce trade agreements, or we can write trade agreements that fulfill their promises, that hold our trading partners accountable for abiding by the rules, and that build on the hard-fought battles waged to build a strong middle class, reward good corporate citizens, preserve our natural resources, and ensure that the food and products Americans purchase are safe.

We can continue to use trade deals to lock in protections for Wall Street, the drug companies, and oil companies, or we can create a predictable structure for international trade without providing corporations with overreaching privileges and rights of private enforcement that undermine our laws.

Middle class families, American manufacturers and farmers, and community leaders across the country all know that we need a new direction for trade.

I am going to ask my leadership, and my caucus, to work with me on this legislation. And I look forward to working with my allies on the other side of the aisle to modernize U.S. trade policy.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, the goal of our trade policy should be to promote fair competition and lift up workers at home and abroad.

Americans support trade that allows responsible businesses to thrive, fueling good-paying jobs and a strong, resilient economy.

But wrong-headed trade pacts following the failed NAFTA-model have betrayed middle class families across the country, destabilizing our economy and destroying communities in rural and urban areas alike.

In my state of Ohio, more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs have been eliminated since 2001. Across the country, more than 3 million manufacturing jobs have been eliminated in that time.

Our failures to modernize our Nation's trade policy, to learn from our mistakes, and to respond to changing dynamics in the global arena, hurt communities like Toledo and Steubenville and Dayton.

That is why voters in my state of Ohio and across the country have sent a message loud and clear demanding a new direction, a very different direction, for our nation's trade policy.

Over the last 8 years, our approach to trade has been haphazard at best.

In the last 2 years, since voters elected candidates who support fair trade, Congress has reasserted itself in trade policy-making, with some improvements to proposed deals with Peru, Panama, Colombia, and South Korea.

We also have chosen not to grant President Bush a renewal of Fast Track.

But our approach to trade has not evolved from reactive to proactive. We have not forged a new approach to trade that is results-oriented, an approach focused squarely on the goals of economic strength, job creation, and U.S. self-sufficiency.

Not surprisingly, polls show that Americans reject current trade policy as misguided.

That is because it is.

It is time to learn from our mistakes.

It is time for a change. The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment, TRADE, Act, which Senator Dorgan, Senator Feingold, Senator Casey, Senator Whitehouse and I are introducing today, is a step towards that change.

This legislation will serve as a template for how to craft a trade agreement that works for workers, for business owners, for our country.

This legislation will mandate a review of all existing trade agreements and will require the President to submit renegotiation plans for those agreements before pursuing new trade agreements.

The TRADE Act will create a committee comprised of House and Senate leaders who will review the President's plan for renegotiation.

This bill spells out standards for future trade agreements, standards based on fostering fair competition, promoting good-paying jobs, and addressing unethical behavior by multinational corporations, including the exploitation of people and natural resources in developing nations.

Trade is an exchange that relies on the integrity of its participants. We must not trade away our fundamental belief in basic human rights and our responsibility to fight the kind of exploitation that threatens vulnerable peoples and vulnerable nations.

That is why our trade policy must not sidestep the impact of lax trade agreements and unethical corporations on developing nations.

The TRADE Act also sets out criteria for a new negotiating process-- one that would do away with the fundamentally-flawed Fast Track process and return power to Congress when considering our nation's trade pacts.

We take for granted our clean air, safe food, and safe drinking water. But these blessings are not by chance: they result from laws and rules that foster fair wages, protect the public health, and promote environmental stewardship.

Flawed trade policy accelerates the import of toxic toys, contaminated toothpaste, and poisonous pet food into this country.

It does not have to be this way.

We have a choice.

We can continue a race to the bottom in wages, worker safety, environmental protection, and health standards.

Or, we can use trade agreements to lift standards abroad--not threaten workers and consumers.

We can continue down the path of the failed NAFTA model, or we can write trade agreements that sustain and grow our Nation's manufacturing self-sufficiency, create good-paying jobs and reduce the trade deficit by providing fair and transparent market access.

We can forsake U.S. standards and U.S. values and ignore trade abuses in order to mass produce trade agreements, or we can write trade agreements that fulfill their promises, that hold our trading partners accountable for abiding by the rules, and that build on the hard-fought battles waged to build a strong middle class, reward good corporate citizens, preserve our natural resources, and ensure that the food and products Americans purchase are safe.

We can continue to use trade deals to lock in protections for Wall Street, the drug companies, and oil companies, or we can create a predictable structure for international trade without providing corporations with overreaching privileges and rights of private enforcement that undermine our laws.

Middle class families, American manufacturers and farmers, and community leaders across the country all know that we need a new direction for trade.

I am going to ask my leadership, and my caucus, to work with me on this legislation. And I look forward to working with my allies on the other side of the aisle to modernize U.S. trade policy.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I echo the words of my friend, Senator Enzi from Wyoming, about Senator Kennedy. I have had the honor for only 15 months now to serve on his and Senator Enzi's HELP Committee. Even more important than Senator Enzi points out and even more important than Senator Kennedy's passion for his work, his commitment to social and

economic justice and his never, ever giving up in fighting for those things he believes in, is what Senator Kennedy does personally for all kinds of people, including people who don't live in his State, people whom he has never met, people who walk down the hall. He brings them into his office and gives them a book, written by Senator Kennedy, but in the name of his dog Splash. And he talks to children. Again, they are people Senator Kennedy doesn't even know, who can do nothing for him politically. He gives so much in those ways.

As Senator Enzi does, I hope Senator Kennedy will be back here as strong as ever. He has used that energy and passion for so many others, and he will put that same energy and passion into being cured. We all look forward to that day in the fairly near future.

(The remarks of Mr. Brown pertaining to the introduction of S. Res. 574 are located in today's Record under ``Submission of Concurrent and Senate Resolutions.'')

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Chinese people have endured an unspeakable tragedy, as we know, with the loss of tens of thousands in a major earthquake. Those numbers continue to grow. On the radio this morning, I heard it looks like more than 50,000 Chinese people have died in one of the greatest tragedies of the last decade. My prayers are with the people of Sichuan Province and all those brave men and women who are there now providing support as volunteers, especially providing support to the Chinese people in Sichuan Province.

I wish to focus on something else in China. This isn't the Chinese people, it is the actions of a few people at the top of the Chinese Government--actions we must confront. When I say ``only a few people at the top,'' the Chinese Government is called the People's Republic of China for a reason. It is a Communist government, a very top-line hierarchical system, where a few people at the top enjoy so much of the benefits and so much of the power and they wield that so unfairly and immorally and, many times, against so many in their country.

For us to ignore the behavior of the Chinese Government, to dismiss that behavior, to minimize that behavior is a reprehensible act on our part.

In a little more than 3 months, the world will witness one of its great quadrennial events--the summer Olympic Games. The games have been billed as a way for the host, China, to reintroduce itself--a new China, if you will--to the international community. And China has pulled out all the stops: $38 billion in infrastructure improvements, including a brandnew 91,000-seat stadium, 300 miles of new roads, and an entirely new terminal at Beijing's International Airport, all because of the Olympic Games.

What China will not be highlighting is its human rights record. That is because it is abysmally disgraceful.

As China rolls out the red carpet to welcome hundreds of thousands of tourists and as Olympic-related media flock to Beijing to watch the events, no one will be allowed to go to Tibet, no one will be allowed to go to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, no one will be allowed to see the hundreds of political prisons, no one will be allowed to visit the areas of China where hundreds of millions live in abject poverty.

Last year, Amnesty International--a no more respected and fairminded group in the world--said of China:

An increased number of . . . journalists were harassed,

detained, and jailed. Thousands of people who pursued their

faith outside officially sanctioned churches were subjected

to harassment and many to detention and imprisonment.

Thousands of people were sentenced to death of executed.

Migrants from rural areas were deprived of basic rights.

The Presiding officer, from the State of Rhode Island, has talked passionately about the freedom of the press and journalism in countries where we have the kind of relationship we have with China and how important it is. Others in this body have talked about human rights and labor rights, and now China has violated those values we hold dear and that international organizations that serve all of the world hold so dear.

Beijing will continue to attempt to paint its repressive regime during the Olympics in the best light possible, as we have seen in the last month with the unnerving events in Tibet. The repression in Tibet, a region similar in its treatment by the government as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is nothing new. For almost 60 years, Tibetans have survived under Beijing repression. Tibet was swallowed up by China in 1950. The Uyghur Autonomous Region was swallowed up by China the year before.

China's policy is straightforward: Declare war on human rights, bring in native Chinese for the best jobs, eradicate the indigenous culture, the language, the spiritual center, disperse the population. It seems to have worked for China's interest every time.

China's policies keep import prices low by allowing inhumane treatment of

workers, slave wages, and unsafe working conditions have become all too common.

China, the Communist regime, has become China, the world's largest one-company town where workers are interchangeable, replaceable parts and where members of the Communist Party are its shareholders.

The United States as purportedly the world leader in human rights--we talk about exporting democracy, we brag about our values, yet out business is with encouragement and incentives--unbelievably enough, sometimes from our own Government--even though we say we are the world leader in human rights. The United States should not be endorsing in any way the brutal and horrific policies of the Chinese Government. Again, the United States, by our actions by the Government and by business do not seem so interested oftentimes in human rights in China in spite of what we say. We should not be sacrificing our moral compass at the altar of the dollar. We do that way too often.

I met with Rabiya Kadeer, the Uyghur dissident leader and head of the Uyghur American Association. She told me of her time in prison for political advocacy on behalf of her people. She spent 6 long years in prison, arrested in 1999 on her way to a meeting with foreign activists and leaders. She told me of her children who either live in fear or live in prison because of her advocacy on behalf of basic freedoms for the 12 or 13 million Uyghur people. She told me of her exile. She is not allowed to return to her native country.

We need the strength to stand up to rather than apologize for China's brutal regime. This has been the systematic policy of a highly efficient and powerful central government.

The Chinese Uyghurs have long fought for more autonomy from Beijing and greater freedom to practice their Muslim religion.

This is not a new policy. We have seen the same in the Zinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region where ethnic Uyghur people have been systematically relocated and repressed. Their Turkic language is prohibited, their women are placed into forced labor, especially young women taken out of the Autonomous Region to other parts of China, in many cases to be slave labor, forced labor, in other cases to be sex slaves, and their political leaders are jailed. Yet we allow China into the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and made them a preferred trading partner.

Communities across America feel the reverberations of this policy. Not only does it blacken our name as a country when China violates every kind of human rights we care about, but then it affects our country in so many other ways.

We have lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs across this country since President Bush has been President. Many of these jobs have been eliminated because of government-subsidized imports from China, because of cheating on currency rules, and because of direct off shoring to countries such as China.

China gives their manufacturers that unfair competitive advantage by manipulating its currency and providing massive subsidies to its industry. We know all that. American companies have been complicit by hiring Chinese subcontractors and forcing those subcontractors to continue to cut costs, meaning contaminated vitamins, contaminated pharmaceuticals, and dangerous toxic lead-based paint on toys.

I am submitting a resolution today calling on the Chinese to free the Kadeer children, free the Uyghur political prisoners, and end the political, religious, and ethnic repression in that part of China.

I ask my colleagues to take a look at this resolution, to meet with Ms. Kadeer and to join me in working to bring the atrocities against the Uyghur people to an end. Instead of welcoming China, celebrating China, and trading with China on their terms, as we all talk about the great quadrennial events of the international Olympic Games, we should be helping China's repressed. We should not indulge China its abuses. It dishonors our own values.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak up to 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. President, both the international community and experts from across our country have come to a definite consensus. Climate change is not a theory. It is a reality. We may not like it, but we have to confront it. Rising temperatures, melting icecaps, and extreme weather show the increasing effects of global warming in the United States and especially around the globe. Without action, we will be unable to avoid dangerous consequences for our children, grandchildren, and subsequent generations. We risk the health of our citizens, the

well-being of our coastal areas, the productivity of our farms, forests, and fisheries.

There is solid support in this institution and around the country for a mandatory cap-and-trade approach to reducing carbon emissions. All three Presidential candidates--Senators Obama, Clinton, and McCain--and both political parties have agreed on this philosophy. The Senate passed the Lieberman-Warner bill out of committee in December. It is likely to reach the floor of the Senate in the next few weeks. I am not saying a climate change bill will pass this year. I am saying a climate change bill will pass. No more burying our heads in the sand, no more ignoring the issue and putting it off for another day. It is not a question of whether; it is a question of when and a question of what it will look like.

As a manufacturing State reliant on coal--not too different from the State of the Presiding Officer--Ohio is going to be significantly affected by the climate change bill regardless of its specifics. I am working with Senators from other industrial States--Senators Casey, Bayh, Lugar, Durbin, Stabenow, Levin, and others--to ensure that the effects on manufacturing jobs are considered as this legislation is drafted. We can't shut our eyes or turn our backs or hope that global warming goes away and becomes someone else's problem. That is not going to happen. But we can maximize Ohio's gains, Pennsylvania's gains, the gains of other States, and minimize those losses, looking first at the opportunities presented to us by global change legislation.

The mandatory cap-and-trade approach to climate change will create a market for clean energy and green jobs. By creating markets for clean energy, we can stabilize our Nation's energy supply, reduce greenhouse gases, and bolster manufacturing in Lima, Zaynesville, Toledo, and Ashtabula. It has been estimated that in terms of a global market, the advanced and alternative energy sector will double several times over in the next decade, from a $55 billion industry to a $226 billion business. Wind power alone, it is estimated, will grow from $18 billion to a $61 billion market. In the last 15 months, I have conducted roundtables in Ohio, bringing together 15 or 20 people to talk about problems, about their communities. You can see what is happening in a State such as mine.

The Cleveland Foundation, in conjunction with Case Western Reserve University, is going to build a field of wind turbines in Lake Erie, the first time wind turbines have ever been placed in a freshwater lake.

I have seen the Composite Center in Dayton which makes new, lighter, stronger materials, initially for airplanes, now for fuel-efficient automobiles and wind turbines. The University of Toledo is doing some of the best wind turbine research in the United States. In Columbus and Ohio State, there is the Center for Automotive Research, the work they are doing for more fuel-efficient automobiles. Today I talked with someone who was visiting Washington from Battelle Institute. They are doing astonishing things on a whole range of issues; Stark State and Rolls-Royce on fuel cells. Oberlin College has built the largest building of any college campus in the country fully powered by solar energy. The problem is those solar cells and panels are not made in this country because we don't make them. They were bought from Germany and Japan.

At the same time, we are seeing the largest solar company in the country producing near Toledo in Perrysburg. In Ashtabula, right across the border from Erie, we are seeing components for wind turbines. In place after place, Ohio is helping to lead the way to make my State the Silicon Valley of renewable energy.

Ohio has the potential to create 20,000 new jobs through renewable energy projects. That puts Ohio second only to California in terms of potential job creation. But we have a lot of work to do. Any climate change legislation must invest in the deployment of renewable energy technology and promote green job growth. That is why I introduced legislation called the Green Energy Production Act last month. It is an energy bill, an environment bill, and a jobs bill. The bill creates a government corporation that will set up loan programs and grant programs for green energy manufacturers, mostly small businesses, to get them to develop products and get them to market.

Over 5 years, the bill would invest $36 billion with no political strings attached, no Government picking winners and losers but companies that need capital that are just taking off, small businesses, businesses that need to grow, businesses that need to expand. Some $36 billion will be invested in green energy manufacturing. We have great R&D in my State, but the big problem is commercialization, the key to creating jobs in my State.

Speaking of jobs, we can't overlook the tremendous challenges the industrial Midwest will face under climate change legislation. My State is the seventh largest in the country by population. We are the fourth largest carbon-emitting State, behind California, Texas, and New York. In the past year and a half, I have held roundtables all over my State in some 60 of the 88 counties. They have given me an opportunity to be with workers and business people and civic leaders and local government officials.

One thing is crystal clear: Ohioans are anxious about their communities' futures, and the statistics match their anxiety. More than 40,000 manufacturing plants have shut down in the United States since 2001. More than 3.3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost, about one-sixth of all U.S. manufacturing jobs. My State has lost more than 200,000 jobs. Pennsylvania is comparable. The simple fact is, our economy cannot prosper unless we manufacture and sell goods as a State and a nation. Manufacturing is too important to the prosperity of this country and to our economic and national security. Manufacturing is too important to ignore, as this Government has done in the last few years.

I know, given a level playing field, our companies can outcompete any around the globe. Any climate change legislation must be developed in conjunction with manufacturers to ensure U.S. competitiveness with other growing industrial giants in the world, particularly China and India. We must work together to ensure that domestic manufacturers are protected from imports that come from countries without comparable climate change legislation. That means working together to provide appropriate transition assistance to our energy intensive industries. My State, in some sense, specializes in energy-intensive industries-- steel, chemicals, glass, cement, aluminum. We must work together to minimize any economic harm while ensuring the environmental integrity of the climate change legislation.

The bill that came out of committee needs to do a better job. It has made progress from the original bill to the substitute bill brought forward by Senator Boxer. It has made major progress, but it has to do a better job of addressing the need, particularly in people's own personal electric bills and the cost of energy to manufacturers. The bill needs to help low- and middle-income consumers who will face higher energy costs and must help communities and workers who are displaced due to a shift from coal power. It means providing support necessary to create green jobs in Ohio and across the Midwest, and it means helping those energy-intensive manufacturers I was talking about with their energy costs and with unregulated international competition. Some environmental groups quote economic models saying that business under a cap-and-trade program will be all wine and roses. They are on one side. Some business groups are touting economic models that predict climate change legislation will send us all back to living in caves. Both sides are wrong. It is not going to be that easy, but it is also not going to put American business out of business.

One last point. When you talk to people about climate change, one of the first questions that always comes up is what do we do about China and India. If they are not going to, why should we, in some sense, unilaterally disarm as a country, putting more and more costs on Ohio businesses in Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati? Why should we put more cost on these businesses, when China and India are not doing that? We have three possibilities. One is do nothing. That is unacceptable. We have two other possibilities:

To work with countries around the world on bringing them to a level of climate change comparable to the level we want to get to; one is multilateral environment and climate change agreements, negotiations, Kyoto-type agreements among all the major industrial powers in the world. That will take years. That will perhaps only be as successful as Kyoto, which wasn't very successful, ultimately.

The other path to walk down is what we do about trade legislation, about accepting those products coming into the United States from other countries. When we have pretty strong environmental laws, you know in your State what has happened with the steel industry, where they have put huge numbers of dollars into scrubbers and other kinds of environmental cleanup. China and India, frankly, don't do that. When we buy products from China and India, we buy steel from them, discounting the issue of toxic toys and contaminants in vitamins and all the unsafe products they send us that are ultimately consumer products, but when we buy steel from China and India, that steel is made by cheaper labor, and it is also made with very weak environmental rules.

The only way to change that, to get China and India to the table, if you will, if we will not do the negotiations that will be so difficult and tedious and take so long, is to say, every time we import steel from China and India, steel where there is an environmental cost in its production, we charge a tariff at the border, a tariff reflecting the cost that they have not borne but that our manufacturers bear on the production of that steel. So why should a steel company in Lorain or a foundry in Mahoning Valley have to pay these huge additional costs under climate change to deal with their carbon emissions, when people in China and India don't? The only way to equalize that and to make this competitive and keep American business competitive is to figure out what it actually costs China and what moneys China and India save by not coming up to the same level of environmental protection that we do.

That should always have been part of the trade debate. The Bush administration has never believed that. That is one of the reasons we have lost so many manufacturing jobs in my State, since President Bush took office--bad trade policy, bad environmental policy, bad labor policy.

Ultimately, this climate change issue is going to be about equalizing the cost of making air cleaner, limiting carbon emissions, dealing with all the issues around CO2. The way to do that is through a trade policy that works for us, for China, for India, and especially works for our grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and those subsequent generations. We must work together in this institution to shape legislation that truly addresses global climate change while protecting our manufacturing jobs. That means working assiduously with countries around the world in reaching those goals.

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