Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman as well for his leadership on this issue.

This is a very tired issue for us. It has been 80 some days, and we have been talking for quite some time, and many of us who are new to this Chamber, as the previous speaker said, who have not been in politics all that long cannot figure out why we are just not doing the right thing. Because this is not a Democratic issue, and this is not a Republican issue. This is not a partisan issue. This is about helping 12 million kids.

And Labor Day, last Monday, I was fortunate enough to have the President of the United States in the State of Ohio. And as he took his motorcade through the gated communities of the suburbs of Richfield, Ohio and had the audacity to talk about compassion, the audacity to talk about working poor, the audacity to talk about helping kids, 500,000 children in the State of Ohio will not be eligible for this tax credit because this body has refused to take it up.

But I can guarantee that if this group of people, this 6\1/2\ million working families, 12 million children, if they had millions of dollars to donate to the Republican party, they would make it on the agenda like that. It is pay to play in Washington, D.C., and we have young children in this country, the wealthiest country in the world, who are not eligible for this, and the big excuse is they do not pay income tax. These families pay sales tax. These families pay property tax. And just because they are poor, we are not going to take care of them. And these are not poor people asking for a handout, as the gentleman from Tennessee makes that point very often. These are not people who are looking for a handout. These are people who go to work every day. And what happened to those values that if they work hard, they play by the rules, we are going to take care of them, we are going to make sure that this Government works on their behalf? Not under this administration. If they do not live in a gated community, if they do not make big money, if they do not donate to the Republican party, their agenda is not brought before this Congress.

The Republicans control the House. The Republicans control the Senate. There is a Republican family that lives in a house right up the street, and if they wanted to take care of this issue, they could. It is a matter of priority. And we are going to sit here, and we are going to stand at this until the wee hours of the morning until this happens, and there will be an election that comes up, and there will be families who should be eligible for this tax credit, who are not, that will be going to the polls very soon.

I think it is crazy when we live in a country where the IRS has a better chance at auditing someone who gets the earned income tax credit than they do for someone who makes $1 million a year. I think that illustrates where we are today in our governmental process. This system is broke. It is a money game. And if they do not have the money that they are dipping into the campaign coffers, their agenda is not brought before this body.

I want to thank the gentleman again for yielding me this time. I also want to thank the gentleman from Texas for all his leadership on this issue. We are going to stand here, and we are going to keep talking until we are blue in the face because these people deserve it. And when our voices are not being heard, it is the voices of millions and millions of children who need our help.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

It tickles me to sit here and listen to these Members talk about agriculture and opening markets with a subsidized product; and if those of us from the Midwest talk about subsidizing steel, we would be Neanderthals. So I just hope everyone understands the duplicity that is going on here.

We all want trade. We all want to trade with other countries. We all recognize the comparative advantage that certain countries have, and we want to help them lift the standards.

The question we have is why do we put commercial standards at such a high level, and we are taking down the environmental and the labor standards that we have agreed to in the last agreement we had with Jordan?

Now, this is a great example from 1994 after we delinked with China human rights from commercial interests. In 1995 there were some property rights that were in question. McDonald's had a lease problem. Mickey Mouse had an intellectual property and royalties problem, and the United States Government threatened a $1 billion trade sanction to protect Mickey Mouse.

Now, give me a break. But we do not have enough energy and commitment to protect the environmental and the

workplace rights that we have established over the last century in this country.

Now we are saying that this is also going to create jobs, when the NAFTA agreement that we agreed to has lost us 3 million jobs. I was in college in 1992, 1993, 1994; and I remember the NAFTA debate and how the United States Government was going to be a country club. Everyone was going to have a great high-tech job, nobody had to use their hands, we would be able to have flex-time at work, and it was going to be a great society.

Now we are finding out that IBM is sending 3 million high-tech software jobs, computer-design jobs to India, so is Microsoft, so is Oracle, and we wonder why there is not a recovery in this country. The investments, the capital, are going to countries that we are doing trade deals with that have low environmental standards and low labor standards.

It is time to start protecting the jobs here in this country and to start exporting our ideals that we have in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time to talk about this very important issue, and I rise against the rule as well.

The issue of agricultural products came up a little earlier. The products that we are going to get into Chile are going to be subsidized products from our government and in turn preventing a lot of the African countries from being able to trade also and being able to compete on an international market.

We all understand comparative advantage and I think we all understand the concept of free trade and I do not want to say for one second that I am not for trade. I think trade is a good thing. But what I cannot understand is why we would have this Jordan agreement which would have us able to enforce environmental standards and labor standards with the same capacity as commercial standards. We are rolling back these provisions in this agreement. And as much as we want to export our products, we want to export the ideals. And regardless of what party we belong to, we agree that in the last century in this country we made great strides in human progress with the labor movement, with the environmental movement, with the raising of living standards in this country, and I think we are getting away from that.

I would like to share with the gentleman from California, and I have enormous respect for him and his staff, an article by Lou Dobbs in which, talking about free trade, he said, ``The proof is in the numbers: The U.S. account deficit, the broadest measure of transactions with other nations, swelled to $503 billion in 2002. That is not the way it was supposed to work. Increased global trade was supposed to lead to better jobs and higher standards of living by opening markets around the world for U.S. goods. Now some people, myself included, are rethinking the belief that free trade benefits all nations.''

I think it is inaccurate to say that we think that somehow these manufacturing jobs are going to move back into northeast Ohio or go back to Detroit.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think it shows a trend, though, to the gentleman from California, that there are many people who bought into the program in the early 1990s who are no longer agreeing with it.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time because it is running out, there is no way we can say with a straight face that it does not pass the snicker test to think manufacturing jobs are going to come back into Ohio or anywhere in the industrial Midwest because we signed this agreement. If we are so committed to the labor standards, why are we rolling back the five principled stances of the International Labor Organization which were in the Jordan agreement? This is prohibition of slavery, nondiscrimination of employment, child labor, freedom of association. We are taking that out.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Then why not put them in?

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the free trade agreement which has been discussed here today for a variety of reasons. I think Members understand that we need to trade and understand that we have an obligation to trade, and for our citizens to have an ability to trade and to buy goods and services. I think many people in this Chamber understand the concept of comparative advantage where certain countries have certain strengths and that we need to tap into those strengths; but I cannot understand, I am having a difficult time as I listen to the previous speakers talk about intellectual property, talk about copyrights, talk about piracy, talk about customs, these are priorities when we negotiate these agreements.

The intellectual property has become our priority, and we need to protect them, but why when we are negotiating these agreements can we not put the same energy and the same conviction into our environmental standards, into labor standards, that we believe in in this country and that we have stood for for many, many years, the great strides through the last century that we have made in the environment, for our labor standards, protection of workers, and we are beginning to see the race to the bottom where manufacturing jobs leave this country, they go to Mexico? They leave Mexico and they go to China because the labor standards there and the environmental standards there are so low that the capital begins to chase to the lowest common denominator.

That is the problem I have with these agreements. And the other speakers kept talking about the intellectual property and kept talking about the copyrights, and that is because those people who want those aspects of the agreement protected are sitting at the table. They are the ones sitting there negotiating these agreements, and so they are making sure that their interests are protected. When are the interests of the environment going to be protected in these agreements? When are the interests of the labor folks and the workers that are being taken advantage of, when are they going to be at the table?

Mr. Speaker, until they are, I am not going to support these agreements. We have an obligation in this country to support and to promote our values. The last speaker talked about what the U.S. will gain. They will gain goods, services, and protections in intellectual property. I want to see trade

agreements that not only protect our corporations and protect our intellectual property and our copyrights because we recognize that those are significant aspects of our society and significant aspects of our economy, but I want to see America illustrate its values, what we stand for. At this time, especially in this country, what do we stand for?

I believe the citizens of this country stand for a strong commitment to our environment and a strong commitment to the working people, the average people who at this point in the world are being taken advantage of. We talk about free trade, but we do not talk about it when we are talking about the African farmer or when we are talking about labor and environmental standards.

I think it is time to even the playing field out, give our workers a chance, and let us start exporting what we stand for in this country and that is a commitment to the values and the freedoms that we have established over many years, and that is the environment and the labor standards. We have the political capital to do it; now we just need the political will to do it.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) for yielding me time.

Mr. Chairman, we know that China participates in forced abortions and we all want that to end, but the argument that we are hearing from the other side is that, if we fund this program, that frees money up for China to participate with forced abortions. So that also means, logically, that the money that Secretary Thompson is using for HIV and AIDS investing in China is also freeing up money for them to use for forced abortions; and it also means the free trade deals that we sign that allow Motorola and other companies to put investment into China also frees up money for them to used for coerced abortion.

That does not make any sense. We all want to prevent abortions. That means funding this program will stop 800,000 abortions. That is the goal. Nobody wants coerced abortions in this Chamber. Nobody. Let us make the proper decision. Let us have preventative medicine and let us prevent 800,000 abortions right now with one vote.

I oppose this amendment. Vote it down. Keep the Crowley language.

Mr. Speaker, I am a new Member of this body, I was just sworn in in January, and as a new Member there is a certain awe to this Chamber, a certain awe to the legislative process and the idea of priorities. You come into this body with the notion of certain priorities that are not Democratic, they are not Republican but they are priorities of the American people.

Unfortunately, it did not take very long for me to recognize that we all do not share the same priorities. We can talk about tax cuts, and we can talk about deficits, and we can talk about our debt; but you just do not have tax cuts without some reaction somewhere down the line in the budget, and I wanted to speak tonight to share with the American people and share with my colleagues my own personal experience that I had over the last few weeks, really since Memorial Day, back in my district, which is northeastern Ohio, Youngstown and Akron, Ohio, and everywhere in between, the cities of Niles and Warren, where there is a strong concentration of veterans.

The reason I rise tonight is to share for the record the feelings, the emotions of the people back in my district. Let me just say, quite frankly, that they are tired of the public relations gimmicks, they are tired of the press conferences, they are tired of the salutations to the veterans. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, their budgets are being cut for the veterans, we are not able to service all the veterans that are beginning to move into the VA system, and we are spending our tax money, and borrowing more money, to give back, when we are cutting short what the veterans deserve.

About 3 months ago or so we passed a resolution out of this body saying that we have unequivocal support and appreciation for our troops. Unequivocal. But for the veterans, we are going to cut your budget.

We just had a Committee on Veterans Affairs meeting. I have been fortunate to serve on the Committee on Veterans Affairs. Here are the President's recommendations to save money at the VA: first, annual fees for some Category 7 veterans; annual fees for all Category 8 veterans; the co-pay went from just a couple of dollars to $7 for prescription drugs, and now it is going to go, I believe the proposal is, from $7 to $15.

Mr. Speaker, I think in this country we are beginning to recognize that the leadership down here is not addressing the problems of our veterans. We are not taking care of those people who we sent to hell, where they lost limbs, had their health damaged for the rest of their lives. And now one proposal is to say if your disability is service- related under 30 percent, that we are no longer going to cover you.

Where are the priorities in this Chamber, where are the priorities in this country, when we stop respecting our veterans? That is the question that we have, that is the question that the American people want answered, and that is what the veterans in the 17th Congressional District want answered. When did we stop respecting our soldiers?

We pass resolutions, we thank, we do press conferences, we turn the PR machines on; but meanwhile, we have veterans that we have not taken care of. The ones I can speak of in northeast Ohio are extremely upset. We talk about tax cuts; but as Tom Friedman talked about today in The New York Times, the reality is, it is service cuts, and, unfortunately, in America we have shown that the priorities are not the veterans.

I had an old law school professor that said follow the money and you will follow the priorities. The money is being cut from the veterans, and that shows us that the priorities here in this body and in this country are not for the veterans, but they are for those people who are going to be getting the big tax cuts. It is not a Democrat or Republican thing, and we are all for tax cuts, we all want to give money back, but not at the expense of the veterans who have fought to give us the freedoms that we enjoy today.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. I would also like to thank the leadership of a colleague of mine, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), who has been tremendous on this issue.

I do not know why we are telling the World Trade Organization what to do because they do not listen to us anyway. We tried to inform them and advise them on steel tariffs and they did not listen to us. We are not against trade. We understand there is going to be trade. There has always been trade, there always will be trade.

What we are against is shifting the debate from this Chamber, shifting the debate from the Parliament, shifting the debate from the Russian Duma to a bureaucratic organization behind closed doors with no accountability. They are not elected by anybody on the face of this Earth, they are appointed, and they represent the corporate interests. That is the problem.

We are losing our sovereignty in this country, and if we tell the European Union or if we tell another country what they need to do, at what point do they tell us what we need to do? When is it our labor laws, our environmental laws that become exposed?

I think that is the thing that we need to be most focused on is that we are losing our sovereignty. We want strong environmental laws in this country, we want strong labor laws in this country, and the World Trade Organization has proven and consistently tried to undermine those things. We need to fix the system and we need to let the WTO be O-U-T.

Mr. Speaker, we witnessed one of the greatest bootlegs in the history of the tax code. We were told that every single person would be able to get something back in this tax code, but there are people making less than $27,000 a year who will not be getting a $400 check, but worse than that, these are families that have worked.

This is not welfare. This is not a give away. These are people who put in 40 hours a week and have children and deserve the $400 back.

In Youngstown, Ohio, where we have a reserve base, there will be one in five military workers who will not be able to qualify for this, putting their lives on the line, active duty members of the military that will not qualify.

All we have to do is raise the top tax bracket. It has been lowered from 38 percent to 35 percent. From 35 percent, raise it to 35.3 percent, and we would have enough money generated to take care of working parents, mostly single parent homes, many military homes that will not be able to utilize this tax credit.

The greatest bootleg in the history of the Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask this Congress to fund the child tax credit. For 6 million families, it would only cost $3.5 billion. We have the $3.5 billion, but we want to give it to the top 1 percent. All we would have to do is take the top tax bracket and instead of cutting it down to 35 percent, cut it down to 35.3 percent, and we would have enough money to give the child tax credit to working families, single parents with children, single mothers trying to raise their children.

Mr. Speaker, we have enough time in this Congress to honor Sammy Sosa and his corked bat, but we do not have enough time to honor the children in single families in this Congress.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I also thank the chairman of the committee for all his help with the provisions in this bill on strengthening the industrial base.

I also wanted to quickly comment on the Tierney amendments, which is included in here, which will allow us to find out why the contractors are leaving the United States. The average taxpayer pays $1,000 a year that goes to building up our own industrial base, and I think the least we can do is make sure that those jobs are employed here in the United States.

I want to thank the chairman for all his work and also thank the ranking member, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton).

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Missouri for yielding to me, and I thank the gentleman for his fine leadership, especially on the ``Buy American'' provisions that are in this bill that we have strengthened, and also the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Manzullo) from the Committee on Small Business, and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson), as well, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), for all their help strengthening the ``Buy American'' provision.

This is really not a Democrat or Republican thing; this is a shift from the United States Congress to the executive branch to make major decisions.

Nobody came before the people to say it was okay. We are losing. The right to receive a veterans' preference is gone. The right to be free from discrimination based upon political opinion is gone. The right to overtime pay is gone. The right to collective bargaining rights is gone. The right to due process, gone; the right to an attorney if you are fired inappropriately, gone.

We just won a war in less than 100 days. This is the thanks we give these people. We want flexibility. We understand the new global order and we want to help. We should pass a bill of rights, which the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper) has been pushing. We should pass it, not because we are going to protect the Constitution, not because it is a Democratic thing, but because these ladies and gentlemen in the Department of Defense deserve it.

I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, the government is a tool to help people. We have an opportunity coming up with the unemployment insurance running out for 36,500 Ohioans to help; 167,000 Ohioans have lost their jobs. These people need help. We hear a lot in this Chamber, and we have heard a lot in Washington, D.C. over the last couple of years about compassion. What could be more compassionate than to help people who have lost their jobs? If the airline industry was going belly up or the pharmaceutical industry was going belly up, we would be tripping over ourselves to help them out. But average people need help, and we are not there to help them.

But what is most confusing to me and what I do not understand is what I read on the AP line today: Operating capacity sank to 7.4 percent in April, the lowest since 1983, as big industry throttled back production amid lackluster demand. People are now worried and the Fed is now worried about deflation. There is too much surplus in labor and in goods. There is too much supply. The answer, supply side economics. We do not need more supply. We need demand in this economy. If you give the businesses a tax break, they are not going to produce any more because no one is buying anything, because there are millions of people who do not have jobs. No matter what you are producing, they do not have the money to go buy it.

The major economists are saying the best stimulus is to invest in middle America, average people, people who do not have unemployment insurance so they will get their money, they will go out in the market, they will buy products and they will turn this economy around and begin to stimulate this economy. It is about the demand side, not the supply side. Let us stop the madness.

Madam Speaker, May 31 is going to be quite a sad day in the history of the United States Congress, but I believe that the real tragedy is for 36,500 Ohioans and over 2 million Americans whose unemployment benefits will expire on May 31.

I do not understand how we can look these people in the eye. I think it is

disgraceful. I think it is shameful. How do we look those Americans in the eye who are struggling to feed their kids, who do not have work, and we tell them that we have a solution to the problem?

What is the solution? I do not believe it is adopting the President's leave-no-millionaire-behind plan. Ever since this President has taken office, we have said we are going to cut taxes. We have a recession, we are going to cut taxes; the economy is down, we are going to cut taxes; you want to go to war, we are going to cut taxes; if tuition goes up, we are going to cut taxes; if health care goes up, we need to cut taxes; and if schools are cutting the year short because they cannot afford to educate their kids, we are going to cut taxes.

We hear a lot, Madam Speaker, about compassionate conservatism, when it seems the only thing being conserved in the United States Capitol is compassion.

I do not understand what is compassionate for the 8.8 million unemployed people in this country. To me, leaving them hanging is cruel. I do not understand what is compassionate for the 80,000 workers who are exhausting their unemployment benefits every week. To me, Madam Speaker, that is cruel. And I do not understand what is compassionate for the 360,000 Ohioans who cannot find a job. I think it is cruel. I do not think it is compassionate.

During our country's last major recession, in the early 1990s, Congress kept the extended unemployment benefits program in place for 27 months; 27 months. Earlier this year, we had to beg and plead just to get the current program extended to 15 months, and the unemployment problem is worse today than it was then.

I must say, Madam Speaker, what I really have a problem with and what I am really not understanding, there was an article today in the Washington Post, and it talked about deflation and how the Fed and the policy advisers of the Federal Reserve are starting now to worry seriously about deflation. They are saying that there are too many goods in the marketplace, there is too much labor in the marketplace, and the prices are going to be driven down because of the oversupply.

There are three job seekers for every job opening. This is one of the worst labor markets since the Great Depression, and we have too many goods, and we have too many workers, too much supply, and the answer is to go back to the supply-side economics of the 1980s.

We have enough supply. We do not need to cut taxes for the wealthiest people. We need demand-side economics, and the greatest stimulus that we can give is to extend these unemployment benefits.

One study says that each dollar spent on unemployment benefits would boost the economy by $1.73. We need people to buy products. There are enough products trying to be sold. If you cut taxes for the top 1 percent, they are not going to produce anything, because there are enough goods already in the marketplace.

We need to take care of the 2 million people and the 36,500 Ohioans, give the money to them, let them feed their families, let them clothe their families, and let them stimulate the economy. We have tried the supply-side economics once in the 1980s. It did not work. We ran tremendous deficits. We increased the burden on future generations. What we need to do is put the money in the pockets of the people who need it, average, middle-class Americans.

Again, Madam Speaker, this is voodoo economics, it is smoke and mirrors, it is bait and switch, and it does not work, and I do not think we should try it again.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and I appreciate the opportunity.

I think the main point that we all need to understand is we are going to borrow $550 billion, not to invest in education, not to invest in health care but a giveaway to the top 1 percent. Four out of five people in my congressional district will see no benefit from the capital gains. Four out of five people in my district will not see any benefit from the dividend tax. If you make $40,000 a year in Akron, Ohio or in Youngstown, Ohio, you get 100 bucks. Meanwhile, tuition is up 12 percent. Health care is up 12 percent.

This is voodoo economics. It is bait and switch. It is an economic joke and it reminds me of the old country song that the gentleman cited a few minutes ago: You get the elevator; we get the shaft.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time, and I would also like to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) for his leadership, as well, on this committee.

Mr. Chairman, 2.6 million job losses, and $1.2 billion trade deficit a day, $1.2 billion trade deficit a day; 2.2 million of the 2.6 million jobs that we have lost are manufacturing jobs, good-high wage, high- paying jobs with health care benefits and pensions.

This is another missed opportunity. We had an opportunity here in the committee to try to stimulate this economy, to try to make advancements; and we had an amendment on the Democratic side, $3.7 billion investment for 100,000 first responders, directly bumped into our local communities that are struggling. We are laying off police. We are laying off firefighters. We are laying off first responders; and those same first responders have also been called to serve in the war, leaving a major hole in our local communities.

In my district alone, 6.9 percent unemployment. In Ohio, 85,000 workers have exhausted their benefits, 42,000 have exhausted their benefits and are still looking for work; and the answer in this Chamber and the answer in Washington, DC is a tax cut.

In my district there is 1 percent of the taxpayers that have an income above $200,000, and 50 percent of the workers in my district will get a hundred bucks. That is not helping average people in this country. And we spew out statistics here left and right, but I am afraid that again all the faces and the names have turned into numbers in this society. And it is time to give a shot in the arm to this economy. We can address local issues. We can invest in our local community. We can employ our first responders and at the same time address the homeland securities issue. This bill is not doing it, and I urge we reject it.