Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, 35 years ago, thousands of young people entered politics for the first time by working on the Presidential campaign of George McGovern--a champion for social and economic justice and leading progressive. Senator McGovern's legacy of progressive politics dates back to volunteering for Henry Wallace's Presidential campaign in 1948. At 19, and still in college, I was one of those who volunteered for Senator McGovern during a time of great social and political upheaval in our Nation. We looked to Senator McGovern for his leadership on ending the Vietnam war; for his vision of a nation defined by equal rights, equal opportunity, and unwavering support for those in need. I remember being struck by the strength of his faith and by his patriotism. When he thought our Nation needed to go to war, he served in uniform--earning the Distinguished Flying Cross during World War II. And when he knew it was a war that was wrong, he spoke out early, and often, as was the case with the Vietnam war. Whether he courageously spoke out against the war from this Chamber as a U.S. Senator, or spoke out for social justice on the Presidential campaign trail, Senator McGovern gave hope--and purpose--to a generation of Americans. He changed lives and improved a nation. Senator McGovern's work continues today. A former U.N. Global Ambassador on World Hunger, Senator McGovern's outreach has helped feed literally millions of families around the world. Together with Senator Bob Dole, he founded the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, which helps feed children in developing nations. And Senator McGovern continues to influence the national debate, speaking out on the Iraq war and weighing in on behalf of disenfranchised populations in our Nation and throughout the world. Senator McGovern changed forever political activism and grassroots organizing. He opened the door for millions of activists attracted by his idealism, many of whom remained in public service their entire lives. More than public servant, Senator McGovern has been a beloved husband and father. The Senator was married to his wife Eleanor for nearly 64 years, before her passing earlier this year. Together, they raised five children, Ann, Terry, Susan, Mary, and Steven. Nearly 35 years after running for President, and marking his 85th birthday, Senator McGovern is ready to help lead us all into the next progressive era of our Nation. I am humbled by Senator McGovern's service to our Nation and feel privileged to call him my friend.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9 a.m., Friday, July 13; that on Friday, following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired and the time for the two leaders reserved for their use later in the day; that the Senate then resume consideration of H.R. 1585 and conduct debate on the Dorgan amendment, No. 2135, as amended, until 9:30 a.m.; that the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the amendment at 9:30 without further intervening action or debate; and that of the time available until then, Senators Dorgan and Sununu each control 10 minutes.

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

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, in November, voters in my State of Ohio and across this Nation shouted from the ballot box: The Iraq war must end. They demanded we refocus our efforts on securing our homeland so that the darkest day in our Nation's history, 9/11, is never repeated. With Democrats in control of Congress this session, we immediately began to work to end the war. We set out to implement the full recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, recommendations that will go a long way toward making our country safer. By working to end the war in Iraq and passing the commission's recommendations, we are executing a strategy to combat terrorism. Make no mistake, ending the war in Iraq is a counterterrorism strategy. Global terrorist attacks have increased sevenfold since we invaded Iraq--sevenfold. Unfortunately and tragically, our continued engagement in Iraq is the best thing that ever happened to jihadist recruitment. Democrats brought to this Chamber not just one piece of legislation to redeploy our troops out of Iraq but many. And each time, every time, either Republicans defeated the measure in Congress by threatening filibuster or the President vetoed it in the White House--each time, every time. Two days ago, the President was in my State in Cleveland trying to buy more time for this war. The President has yet to define ``victory.'' He has yet to tell us how many years it will take to achieve whatever his definition of ``victory'' is. Will we be in Iraq for 5 more years, for 10 more years, for 15 more years? Will more thousands of U.S. service men and women die, tens of thousands? The President has yet to hold himself and his administration accountable for fomenting a civil war and breeding more global terrorism. The President is proud of his stubbornness. He should be ashamed. The path he is wed to has simultaneously increased the threat of terrorism and reduced our Nation's capacity to protect against it. Stubbornness is not leadership. Defensiveness is not leadership. Finger-pointing is not leadership. Supporting the President's strategy in Iraq because you support the President is not leadership. Lives are at stake. Our homeland security is at stake. Global stability and security are at stake. Yesterday we learned that al-Qaida is at pre-9/11 strength. That is frightening news, and it is cause for outrage because it did not have to be that way, and it does not have to be that way. We learned yesterday that the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is fostering the next generation of al-Qaida at an alarming rate. What kind of signal exactly does the President and his supporters think we send by failing to secure the region where we know al-Qaida lives and trains and plans, according to military analysts, with relative freedom--the same region that served as the breeding ground for global terrorism through al-Qaida before 9/11, the same region we now know that al-Qaida trained in for the deadliest attack on our Nation's soil, the same region where Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind 9/11, is believed to be hiding, free to plot the next attack on our homeland. Over the objection of military advisers, the 9/11 Commission, and the voice of a nation, the President stubbornly insists upon staying the course with a failed policy in Iraq. Staying the course with the President's failed Iraq policy hasn't forced our Government to take its eye off the ball, it has caused us to drop it. Prior to World War II, the French built the Maginot Line, assuming this line would prevent Germany from attacking France. History proved the French wrong. The President's strategy in Iraq is the Maginot Line of the 21st century. It imperils our Nation by mistakenly focusing our attention in the wrong direction. We have dropped the ball on capturing Osama bin Laden. We have dropped the ball on securing Afghanistan. We have dropped the ball on implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations. Anyone who thinks those aren't signals al-Qaida is paying close attention to is sorely mistaken. Supporting the President's policy doesn't just fail to effectively target terrorism, it puts a bull's-eye squarely on our Nation. Ending the war in Iraq isn't just about bringing our troops home. It isn't just about ensuring veterans get the health care and the benefits they have long been denied. It isn't just about a new direction in our foreign policy. It is about returning our focus to where it must be if our Nation, our communities, and our families are to remain safe. Ending the war in Iraq is about reengaging in full force on the war on terror. I applaud my Republican friends who have chosen to stand up to the President. More and more of them have taken steps of bravery with every vote we bring to the floor. But it is not enough. With every lost vote, we add more lives to the list of the men and women lost in Iraq. With every lost vote, we empower al-Qaida. In the Senate, those of us committed to ending this war of choice and securing our Nation will keep fighting to end the war. I appreciate the leadership of Senator Webb, of Senator Hagel, Senator Reid, and Senator Levin, all of whom have shown courageous leadership on this crisis of a generation. Together, we are going to change this policy. The safety of every American depends on it. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of the senior Senator from Iowa and his terrific work on North Korea and what we need to do, and I thank him for that. Today, new trade figures were released by the Department of Commerce. The news continues to be bad, as our trade policy continues on its merry way. We saw the numbers--$20 billion trade deficit in May, the most recent number they released--$20 billion, leaving us for the year, at this point, a $96 billion trade deficit with China. That is a 15- percent increase over last year. That means we are buying $96 billion more from China than we are selling to China, and that is just through the first 5 months of 2007. To understand a billion dollars, which is pretty hard to do, if you had a billion dollars and you spent a dollar every second of every minute, of every hour, of every day, it would take 31 years to spend $1 billion. The pages who sit in this Chamber, Mr. President, have lived about a half billion seconds. They are a little older than half of 31 but not much. So our trade deficit with China, so far this year, up through the first 5 months since January 1, is $96 billion. Our trade deficit with the whole world, just in the month of May, was $66 billion. President Bush the first said a trade deficit of a billion dollars translates into 13,000--mostly manufacturing jobs--13,000 jobs for a $1 billion trade deficit. You can do the math and see what this continued persistent insidious trade deficit is doing to our economy. Those are just numbers. Last week, in my State of Ohio, just to put faces with those numbers, I was in the town of Lima, the town of Mansfield, where I grew up--my mother had her 87th birthday--I was in Lorain and Marion and Zanesville. Each of those are medium-sized cities of 30,000, 40,000, 50,000, and 60,000 people. Each of those cities contributed so much to the muscle of this country, to our war effort in World War II, to the building of a middle class, and to doing all that industrial America has done, and in each of those communities--Lima, Zanesville, Mansfield, Lorain, and Marion--and I could add Springfield, Xenia, Findlay, Ravenna and Ashtabula--my wife's hometown--I could add all those cities, and in too many cases the growth in this economy that the President trumpets when he comes to Cleveland--a more prosperous area--the President trumpets this economic growth, an economic growth that is passing by too many of these communities. When I grew up in Mansfield, we had the international headquarters of Tappan-Stowe, Westinghouse, General Motors, and we had a Mansfield Tire Company, and the corporate headquarters of Ohio Grass, and tens of thousands of industrial manufacturing jobs. Today, of those companies I mentioned, only General Motors is still there. Mr. President, we know what that kind of job loss does to communities when a company closes and lays off 2,000 people to move to Mexico, to China, or whatever happens. When 2,000 people lose their jobs, or 200 people lose their jobs, we know what that does to the community and to the families and to those individuals. We also know it means layoffs for teachers, police officers, firefighters, and that the community is less safe, less prosperous, and there is less opportunity for young people in those communities to go to school and get a good education in hopes of achieving the American dream. The President's answer to this--and I don't put all of this decline in manufacturing, where my State of Ohio has lost literally hundreds of thousands of jobs, onto the Bush administration. I don't put all of this at the President's feet nor at the feet of failed trade policy, but clearly NAFTA, PNTR with China, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, trade agreements that are now on the table, all of these clearly have contributed to the decline of manufacturing in a big, big way. So what is the President's answer? We had NAFTA, we had PNTR, we had CAFTA, and so the President's answer is let's do four more trade agreements. Let's do a trade agreement with Panama, let's do a trade agreement with Peru, let's do a trade agreement with Colombia, and let's do a trade agreement with South Korea. Again and again it is the same NAFTA failed model. This time the President said it is going to be better because we are going to include labor and environmental standards in Peru and in Panama. First, if that is the case, why today, literally this week, were workers in Peru demonstrating on the streets? Because they think these trade agreements are bad for workers in their country too. The fact is, these trade agreements might be good for some investors short term but they are never good for the workers in Peru, they are not good for workers in Panama, they are not good for the workers in the United States, and they are not good for our communities or families. The President says: Well, this trade agreement is different because we have labor and environmental standards that are going to be negotiated alongside them. But the fact is that is what they said about NAFTA. They passed labor and environmental standards in a side agreement and it did nothing to raise the labor and environmental standards in NAFTA, but it did turn a trade surplus that we had with Mexico in 1993 into a trade deficit into the tens of billions of dollars. We know that. We also know what happened when we signed a trade agreement with Jordan--one I voted for when I was in the House of Representatives--a trade agreement that had solid labor and environmental standards in the middle of the agreement, at the core of the agreement. We also know that happened in 2000. In 2001, when President Bush took office, his trade representative, Robert Zoellick, wrote a letter to the Jordanian Government saying we were not going to use the dispute resolution and not going to actually enforce the labor and environmental standards. What has happened? Jordan is now a sweatshop with a whole lot of Bangladeshi workers exporting textiles and apparel all over the world and has undercut all that trade agreement has been. It has undercut all that trade agreement should have been. So when I hear the President say we are going to do a trade agreement with Peru and Panama and South Korea and Colombia, it is the same old story. The trade policy is not working. We need something different. We need to go back and relook at NAFTA, relook at PNTR, relook at CAFTA. We also need a trade policy that will have strong labor and environmental standards and strong food safety standards. Look at what has happened with China in the last few weeks. Look at the news stories about China--contaminants or worse in toothpaste and dog food, defective consumer toys for children. We are exposing American children, American families, Americans generally to the products coming from a country with no regulation, with no health and environmental standards, with no consumer product safety standards--none of those. Yet our market is wide open for them to sell into this country and just end run all the protections we have built to raise our standard of living and to protect our families and our children. As Senator Dorgan said, we also need trade agreements with benchmarks to allow us to gauge whether these serve the national interest. We should have objectives of opening markets and creating jobs ensuring these benchmarks, so each year we have a report card whether this trade deal is actually helping us export or is this actually exporting jobs. Is this trade deal helping American workers bring their wages up or are these trade agreements pulling wages down? Are they helping to build a middle class or are they, like they have in the past, taking them piece by piece and pulling apart the middle class in this country? We know what we need to do. We know, unfortunately, what the Bush administration wants to do on trade policy. Now is the time to start by rejecting these trade agreements the administration continues to push down our throats. At the same time, when we pass trade agreements that work for workers and work for the middle class in this country and work for poorest workers in the developing world, we also need a manufacturing policy in our country. We need a tax system that rewards work, a tax system that encourages production in this country, the enlargement of the manufacturing extension partnership Senator Kohl from Wisconsin so eloquently spoke about, and we need a real alternative energy policy in this country, one that really will mean more manufacturing of wind turbines--the University of Toledo does some of the best wind research in the country--and of solar panels. My State has a variety, a whole bunch of manufacturing capabilities. There is simply no reason we can't help to turn my State into a Silicon Valley of alternative energy. It is an opportunity whose time has come. It is an opportunity for us, as a Senate and a House, and for Governor Strickland in Ohio and Lieutenant Governor Fisher and all of us to work together, not just to change the direction of trade policy or change our tax system to help the middle class and help American workers but to embark on an alternative energy policy that will help stabilize energy prices, that will help wean us off Middle Eastern oil, and ultimately will help produce good-paying industrial jobs in our State. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period for morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. As in executive session, I ask unanimous consent that the injunction of secrecy be removed from the following treaty transmitted to the Senate on July 12, 2007, by the President of the United States: International Conventions for the Suppression of Nuclear Terrorism (Treaty Document No. 110-4). I further ask that the treaty be considered as having been read the first time; that it be referred with accompanying papers to the Committee on Foreign Relations and ordered to be printed; and that the President's message be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I rise in support of the Employee Free Choice Act which will be in front of this body this week. Historians who take a clear-eyed look at the last 30 years will tell you productivity has been rising, our economy has been expanding, corporate profits are up, executive salaries are way up, and yet the workers responsible for our Nation's prosperity have not reaped anywhere near their share of the benefits. The hallmark of our economy for generations has been those people who produce the wealth, people who work with their hands, people who work with their minds, the employees of this country. Those who produce wealth will share in the wealth they create. As productivity goes up, through most of our history, certainly in the last 100 years, so have wages. But things have changed. In 2005, the real median household income in America was down 3 percent from the median income in 2000. In Ohio, my State, it was down almost 10 percent. Meanwhile, the average CEO makes 411 times more than the average worker. In 1990, the average CEO made 107 times more. We can see, as productivity goes up for workers, executives make more, profits are higher, but workers are not sharing in the wealth they create. That is what made the 2006 elections so important because the middle class spoke up, the middle class understanding their wages are stagnated, understanding they have not shared in the wealth they created. That is what makes today so important. We are considering today landmark legislation supported by workers, employers, religious organizations, civil rights groups, advocates for children's legislation, which will give employees a real choice on whether they want to join a union. This legislation probably won't pass this week. Republicans have again, one more time, threatened to filibuster and one more time we probably won't get the 60 votes to pass this legislation. But it is clear a majority of the American people want it, a majority of the House of Representatives wants it, a majority of the Senate wants it. We will keep coming back year after year supported by these workers, employers, religious organizations, civil rights groups, and advocates for children. I would point out, in pursuit of economic justice, why this Employee Free Choice Act is so important and what has happened to our economy in the last six decades. Each of these bars represents 20 percent of wage earners in this country, the lowest 20-percent wage earners and the highest 20 percent. We can see, from 1947 to 1973, the height of unionism in our country, the period when the most American workers belonged to unions, what happened. There was strong economic growth for all of society, for all workers in every category, but the strongest economic growth in wages was the lowest 20-percent of wage earners from 1947 to 1973. In the seventies and eighties, the percentage of American workers in unions declined. Other things were going on too, such as the trade surplus went to a trade deficit, and other things. The big part of that was unionization. Look at 1973 to 2000; there was still economic growth in all segments of our society. On average, in each category, workers' incomes went up, but the lowest 20 percent had the lowest percentage growth in income, and the highest 20 percent had the highest growth in income. We can already see a splitting apart, where wage growth did not quite track productivity. Since 2000, we can see something else happened. This trend has exploded. Since 2000, all five categories have seen their wages go down. The lowest 20 percent has had the biggest decline. Only when we cut off the top 1 percent have we seen incomes go up. The top 1 percent has seen their incomes go up 6 percent; the lowest has seen their incomes drop about 5 percent. Again, that is in large part because fewer and fewer Americans belong to labor unions, and it is more and more difficult to join a union. Employers are stronger. Employers spend more money. Employers hire more firms with great expertise on how to stop union drives, to defeat unions, to refuse to bargain if a union is voted in. Literally there have been tens of thousands of infractions those employers have engaged in against their employees. This bill makes sense.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, as we debated energy and immigration issues in this body for the last 3 weeks, there has been palpable anxiety that we all see in our States, we all see in our homes, about our economy and about the future of the middle class--the squeeze on the middle class, the declining or stagnant wages of way too many middle-class households. In 2005 the real median household income in America actually went down 3 percent, from the year 2000. In Ohio it was down almost 10 percent. The average CEO makes 411 times the wage of the average worker; in 1990 the average CEO made 107 times as much. We know what has happened. More important, we need to look at what has happened to wages in this country in a historical sense in the last 60 years. From 1947 to 1973, when our country, after World War II, was growing, you can see how wages grew among different people in our economy. The bar on the left is the lowest 20-percent wage earners, up to the highest 20-percent wage earners. So those are the lowest wages. The lowest incomes in our country saw their wages grow the fastest of any one of those groups. From 1973 until 2000, you can see the increase. Every group still increased, but growth changed sharply. The lowest 20 had the lowest economic growth; the highest 20 percent had the highest. I would add, 1973 was the year we went from a trade surplus in our country to a trade deficit. In other words, before 1973, we exported more goods in terms of dollars, in terms of value, than we imported. Since 1973, that number has gone the other way. It has gone dramatically the other way in the last 10 or 15 years. Now, since President Bush took office in 2000, we have seen an even greater change in income for all Americans. The lowest 20 percent had an annual decrease, as I mentioned earlier, but so did the second quintile, the middle, the slightly upper middle, and the top 20 percent all had income decline. The only group that had an income increase in this 5- year period or so was the top 1 percent. We have seen clearly that our economy is not working the way it should for middle-class Americans. That is why there is such anxiety among middle-class Americans. That is why so many of us who were elected for the first time, including the Presiding Officer, to the Senate in the year 2006, we knew of that anxiety and talked about middle-class issues: about health care, education, about jobs, about trade, about income. Here is the real story. Since around the time of the trade deficit, the trade surplus prior to 1973 turning into the trade deficit, we have seen wages and productivity go like this. For many years, from World War II, for about 25 years, if you were a productive worker, your wages reflected your productivity. In other words, the more money you created for your employer, the more you shared in the wealth you created. That was the American way. That is how you build a middle class. You are more productive and you share in the wealth you create. But something happened in the early 1970s. Again, in 1973 we went from a trade deficit to a trade surplus. We can see from about that time on, that productivity in this country kept rising, but wages in our country have been relatively flat. One other thing happened, in addition to in 1973 going from a trade surplus to trade deficit, that was the time with the most pronounced decline in unionization. As Senator Kennedy pointed out earlier today, as we have seen fewer people who are organized into unions, we have seen more stagnation of wages, even with productive workers With the decline in unionization and with the trade deficit, wages have stayed relatively flat. That is why we need a very different trade policy. That is why we need the Employee Free Choice Act. I might point out the Employee Free Choice Act does not abolish the secret election process. That would still be available. The bill simply enables workers to form a union through majority signup, if they prefer that method. So workers under current law may use the majority signup process only if their employers say yes. We think workers should make that determination, that we either want an election or we would like to do the simple card check. That will, in fact, increase unionization. We will also see that it will mean more mirroring of productivity in wages. I would like to shift for a moment to some of my earlier comments about how in 1973, as we went from trade surplus to trade deficit, some of the things that happened in our economy. We know, going back not quite as far as 1973, only 15 years ago, the trade deficit in this country was $38 billion the year I first ran for the House of Representatives down the hall. Today, the trade deficit in our country exceeds $700 billion. It has gone from $38 billion to $700-plus billion. President Bush, the first, said $1 billion in trade deficit translates into 13,000 jobs--$1 billion in trade deficit translates into 13,000 jobs. So do the math. We now have a $700 billion-plus trade deficit. We know what kind of havoc that wreaks on Steubenville, Toledo, and Portsmouth, Marion and Mansfield and Springfield and Xenia and Zanesville and all of these communities that were industrial towns that have had such damage done to their communities. They have had plant closings, they have had layoffs. Every time a plant closes, it means fewer firefighters, fewer police officers, fewer teachers in the public schools. We know what that does to our quality of life. So the answer from the Bush administration, as we passed NAFTA and PNTR with China and CAFTA and every other trade agreement, as this trade policy has clearly failed, is: Let's do more of it. Let's do more trade agreements. So now the President is likely going to bring in front of this body a trade agreement with Peru and a trade agreement with Panama. The President's U.S. Trade Representative, Susan Schwab, an honorable woman, straightforward, candid when you talk to her about this, she says: Yes, but now we have environmental and labor standards in these trade agreements. But there are a couple of problems with that. First of all, we do not yet. We have not seen the text of the agreements. We have not seen, in fact, nor are we at all certain, that the labor and environmental standards will be inside the agreements; they may be side agreements. We tried that once with the North American Free Trade Agreements. The labor and environmental standards were outside the agreements. They were in a special side agreement, and they had virtually no impact. Where we had a trade surplus with Mexico when NAFTA was signed a decade and a half ago, now our trade deficit with Mexico is some $70 billion. That same trade situation has exploded to a huge trade deficit with Canada also. So clearly we know in our communities how many plants have closed and companies have and jobs have moved to Mexico. So the second thing we know about Jordan, about the trade agreements with Peru and Panama, the proposed agreements, is that the Secretary says they will enforce these labor and environmental standards as they unveil them, again not specific, not in writing yet. The lesson again from this administration is when Congress, in the year 2000, passed the Jordan trade agreement, there were strong labor and environmental standards in that agreement. But when his U.S. Trade Representative, Mr. Zoelleck, assumed his position at USTR, Mr. Zoelleck sent a letter soon after to the Government of Jordan saying he was not going to, because of the dispute resolution, he was not going to enforce the labor and environmental standards. Jordan has since pretty much become a country of sweatshops, where Bangladeshi workers, many workers imported from Bangladesh work at substandard wages and terrible conditions in sweatshop-like atmospheres and use Jordan as an export platform. All of that tells me our trade policy simply is not working. If we are going to get serious about building the middle class--we spent a lot of time yesterday in Senator Enzi's committee, and Senator Kennedy's committee, we passed legislation on higher education, the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, passed bipartisanly. Senator Enzi showed great leadership, as did Senator Kennedy and others. We need to do better to make education affordable for the middle class. We need to do better with health care and better with prescription drug benefits. We need to continue to keep up with the minimum wage. We raised the minimum wage earlier this year. All of those things are important. But at the same time, two of the most important things that this body needs to do is to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to give the tens of millions of workers in this country who want to join a union the opportunity to organize and bargain collectively because it will mean higher wages and higher benefits. History absolutely proves that. The other thing we need to do is to understand we need a very different trade policy, not more of the same, not Panama, not Peru, not Colombia, the way these agreements are written, not South Korea, the way that agreement is written, but agreements that serve the middle class, that lift up workers in the United States and lift up workers of our bilateral trading partners. Because we know that our trading policies will not be judged effective until the poorest workers in the poorest countries in the world are not just making products for Americans to use but that those workers are actually able to buy those products themselves. We have seen that. Where we do trade right, we know it can work. We have clearly seen a trade policy that has failed. It is important, as this Congress looks at the trade agreements coming forward, Panama and Peru, and looks at trade promotion authority, legislation that may come in front of this body sometime this summer, that we keep our eye on looking at what has failed in trade policy and what has worked. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess under the previous order.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. 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 19, 2007, at 9:30 a.m., in open session to consider the nomination of the honorable Preston M. Geren, to be Secretary of the Army.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 19, 2007, at 10 a.m., in 215 Dirksen Senate Office Building, to consider an original bill entitled the ``Energy Advancement and Investment Act of 2007.''

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 19, 2007, at 10 a.m. to hold a nomination hearing.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, June 19, 2007, at 2:30 p.m. to hold a hearing on the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on Tuesday, June 19, 2007, at 9:30 a.m. in order to conduct a hearing entitled: ``The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Federal Government: A Model Public-Private Partnership Accelerating Research Toward a Cure.''

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 19, 2007 at 2:30 p.m. to hold an open hearing.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, historians who take a clear-eyed look at the last 30 years will tell you, and in particular economists will tell you, productivity has been rising, our economy has been expanding, and the workers responsible for our Nation's prosperity have not reaped anywhere near their share of the benefits which they have earned. In 2005, the real median household income in America was down almost 3 percent from the median income in 2000. That is understanding that productivity has sharply increased among American workers. In Ohio, median income was down almost 10 percent. Meanwhile, the average CEO makes 411 times more than the average worker. As recently as 1990, the average CEO made 107 times more; so from 107 times more than the average worker in 1990 to now, 411 times more than the average worker. Let me explain it another way. In the Agriculture Committee a couple of months ago, a young woman in her mid-thirties, with a 9-year-old son, came and testified about food stamps. The average food stamp beneficiary in our country gets about $1 per meal per person. She and her son got about $6 a day for food stamps. She works full time at a $9-an-hour job. She has no health care benefits. She gets a food stamp benefit. She is president of the local PTA at her son's school. She volunteers to teach Sunday school. And she is active in the Cub Scouts for her son. She works, as I said, full time, making $9 an hour, and gets a small food stamp benefit. She says at the beginning of the month she serves her son porkchops a couple of times, and as the month goes on she takes him to a fast food restaurant once or twice, but by the last couple of days of the month she sits at the kitchen table with her son and doesn't eat. Her son asks her what is wrong, and she says she's just not feeling well. She simply runs out of money at the end of the month. This is somebody playing by the rules. Later in the day, on the Banking Committee, a committee on which I sit with the Presiding Officer from New Jersey, Secretary Paulson was testifying, the Secretary of the Treasury, and I told him the story of this lady from Middletown, OH. He said: Senator, you have to understand we have had 2\1/2\, 3 percent economic growth in the last year. Things in our country are going well. Yes, things are going well in terms of profits for corporations. Things are going well in terms of top executives. But too often they really aren't. Just look at this chart from 1946 to 1973. Economic opportunities for poor and working families grew. The incomes of the country's workers are divided. The lowest 20 percent, second lowest, middle, and then the top 20, top 40 percent, and the top 20 percent here. Families who worked hard and played by the rules had a real chance of getting ahead. You can see those from 1947 to 1973, the lowest 20 percent of our wage earners had the highest growth in income; those who made the most had the lowest. So we are seeing all boats rise--boats rising a little faster for those in the lowest incomes. Beginning in about 1973 and through to 2000, workers at the bottom and in the middle began to share less and less of the wealth they created. Even though their productivity was going up, their wealth didn't, their wages didn't. Economic growth flattened out for those same families. You can see there is still economic growth at the lowest 20, 40, 60 percent, but the fastest growth in incomes was in the top 20 percent. That was in 2000. As the economic pie got bigger, the slice for most Americans got smaller. Here you can see the most devastating news of all in the last 4, 5, 6 years. The only people who had economic growth in this country were the top 1 percent. These are the five quintiles. The top 1 percent are the only ones who had economic growth, and those at the bottom fell the furthest and further behind. Historians will also say that in 2006 the middle class spoke up and sent a message to Congress demanding change. This Congress raised the minimum wage for the first time in a decade. This Congress is fighting for fair trade like never before. And I speak today, Mr. President, in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, which goes to the heart of the plight of working families to reap the benefits of the productivity they created, to provide a home and health care and pensions for themselves and a college education for their kids. The Employee Free Choice Act is a historic step for working families. It would give workers the right to organize so they can fight for fair wages and decent benefits. The efforts of labor organizers more than 100 years ago finally led to the progress made seven decades ago with the signing of the Wagner Act. The rights that became law then ensured fair pay and decent working conditions. But more and more employers chose to flout the law by intimidating workers and suppressing union activities. All across Ohio, I talk with workers who have tried to form a union and who share with me the tactics taken by some employers--not all but some employers--to prevent workers from organizing. I talked with Bill Lawthorn from Macomb, OH. Bill and his coworkers wanted a union so workers would be treated with the respect and dignity all laborers deserve. They hoped with the union they would get fair and decent wages, a decent retirement plan, and decent health care benefits. According to Bill, the company responded with threats, with intimidation, and harassment. Bill said the company threatened to fire him even if the campaign for the union failed. The union lost the election, and the day after, Bill, in fact, was fired. Since then, various labor boards have held the company's actions were illegal. Bill has not been reinstated, though, or seen 1 cent of backpay, even though his firing was illegal. That is why we need the Employee Free Choice Act. Despite the struggle, despite doing odd jobs to pay the bills and relying on friends, family, and neighbors, Bill says, if he had the chance to do it all over again, he would do everything exactly the same because he knew he was right. It was the right thing to do, he said, and the Employee Free Choice Act is the right thing to do. In 2005 alone, 31,000 employees were awarded backpay by a very conservative pro-business National Labor Relations Board due to retaliatory firings and unfair labor practices. I repeat, 31,000 employees were given backpay because, according to the National Labor Relations Board, they were fired illegally and unfairly. Many companies decide to fire union supporters. Even if employees later successfully prove their case, the penalties all too often are an insufficient deterrent. These practices must end. The Employee Free Choice Act is the first step. For the first time in our history, our sons and daughters do not have the opportunities their moms and dads had. A son, in 1994, earned 5 percent higher wages than his dad did in 1964. You can see how wages went up in that generation. But in 2004, a son's wages were down 12 percent from what his father made in 1974. You can see, too many kids are pessimistic about their futures. We cannot continue this course. Unions are an agent for change. History will show that this Congress responded to the ever-increasing gap between the haves and have-nots. Fair trade, fair wages and benefits, the right to join a union--all three are basic to a society where work is rewarded and worker intimidation is not tolerated. Majority Leader Reid is committed to moving forward on fair trade issues, on fair wages and fair benefits issues, as we already have, and equally importantly, the right to join a union. The Employee Free Choice Act is a major step for working families. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of turn.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to use Senator Tester's time for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise to speak for a moment on the Employee Free Choice Act, the legislation we will be considering this week and legislation which will, frankly, help to build the middle class. That is something I know the Presiding Officer spoke about in Pennsylvania often in the last year, as I did in Ohio. We know what has happened to manufacturing jobs in this country, many of them good-paying union jobs. In my State, we have lost literally hundreds of thousands of them--more than 3 million in the last 5 years nationally. We know what has happened as profits and wages have gone up in this country--excuse me--as profits and top executive salaries have gone up. We know that for most Americans, their wages have been stagnant. Part of that is the decline of unionization. Poll after poll after poll shows that most people in this country, if presented with the opportunity, would like to join a union, but most are denied that opportunity because of the kind of workplace they are in oftentimes but oftentimes simply because management--employers--is able to beat back any kind of unionization effort. That is the importance of the Employee Free Choice Act. Let me illustrate by an example. The Presiding Officer and I sit on the Agriculture Committee together and one day back in February, our first month on the job--roughly the first month--we heard from a woman from southwest Ohio who came and testified on food stamps. The food stamp benefit in this country on the average is $1 per person per meal. She and her son, as a result, get about $6 a day in food stamps. She works full time. She is a single parent with a 9-year-old son. She is the president of the local PTA of her son's school. She teaches Sunday school, and she volunteers for the Cub Scouts for her son. She works full time making about $9 an hour. She is a food stamp beneficiary. She occasionally makes her son pork chops, which he likes to eat once or twice at the beginning of the month. During the first couple of weeks, she takes him to a fast-food restaurant once or twice. Almost invariably, the last couple of days of the month, she sits at the kitchen table with her son, just the two of them, and she says she doesn't eat. He says: Mom, what is wrong? She says: I am just not feeling well today, son. She has run out of money. It happens almost every month. She is playing by the rules. She works hard. She is doing almost everything we ask. She is involved in the community. My belief is that, through talking to people like her, if she had the opportunity to join a union, she would see several things happen. She would see a higher wage. She would be more likely to have health insurance to build toward a pension. All the things everybody in this institution has, everyone who sits in the U.S. Senate--everyone who works in this institution, on that side of the Capitol or on this side of the Capitol, has health care, has a decent wage, and has a decent pension. The single force that gives people an opportunity for health care, a decent wage, and a decent pension is unionization. We know that. If you trace the numbers of people joining unions and you draw a graph about wages in this country, the lines are almost parallel. We are a more productive workforce than we have ever been. Yet wages have not kept up with productivity. When you measure, for decades and decades in our country, as productivity went up, wages went up. But during the last few years, as productivity has gone up sharply, wages have continued to remain stagnant. That is in large part because of the decline of unionization. That is the importance of the Employee Free Choice Act. That is why it matters to our country. That is why it matters for building a strong middle class. That is why the Senate this week should pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2:15 today, there be 60 minutes remaining for debate with respect to the Bunning and Tester amendments, that the time be equally divided and controlled, and that the remaining provisions of the previous order remain in effect.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, today we are considering the Energy bill. When you talk about energy policy, you think about--you almost can't separate it from trade policy, from manufacturing policy, from what is happening to American jobs and American industry. American manufacturing has been a bedrock of our country's strength and prosperity for much of this country's existence, certainly for the last century and a half. Our current trade policy has caused our Nation to hemorrhage manufacturing jobs and devastated communities in my home State of Ohio and across the Nation. Last week, Senator Stabenow and others participated in a manufacturing summit with leaders from Government and industry, trying to figure out how we remain competitive, how we shape trade and tax policies to help, not hurt, our small companies or medium-size manufacturers. I live in a state, from Steubenville to Toledo, from Ashtabula to Dayton, where job loss has way too often been the order of the day-- manufacturing jobs lost, often jobs going to Mexico when plants close, often jobs outsourced to China--so often devastating communities. When a plant shuts down in Lima or Mansfield or Zanesville or Marion, that is not just a loss to those workers or to those families, but it is layoffs of firefighters and police officers; it is fewer schoolteachers to teach children in those communities where parents may have lost their jobs. It is pretty clear as a Nation we need to fight back. When I look at what this Energy bill can be about and the leadership of Senator Bingaman and what he is doing with this energy legislation, I think about Oberlin College. Oberlin College, a school in northern Colorado, is the site of the largest building on any campus in America that is fully powered by solar energy. Yet the solar panels in Oberlin College to power this solar building, this building on Oberlin's campus, were all purchased in Japan and Germany because we don't make enough of them in this country. The same can be said for wind turbines. As we have begun to construct wind turbine fields around the country, looking at places such as Lake Erie and the Great Plains and other places, we know that most of the components for these wind turbines are built abroad. That is something where a manufacturing policy and an energy policy come together. At the same time, we have seen across the hall, in the House of Representatives, a move afoot with the Bush administration to pass two more trade deals, a trade agreement with Panama and a trade agreement with Peru. The trade policy in this country--you have to wonder how many more trade deals are we going to pass before the powers that be in the White House understand our trade policy has failed? Fourteen or fifteen years ago, when I ran for Congress, we had a trade deficit in this country of $38 billion. Today that trade deficit exceeds $700 billion. It is a growth of almost 20 times. To understand in some sense what a $38 billion trade deficit that a decade and a half later is a $700-plus billion trade deficit means, think about it in these terms. The first President Bush said a billion dollar trade deficit translates into 13,000 lost jobs. Do the math and you can see why we have had the devastation across particularly the industrial Midwest, but also every State in this country has lost significant manufacturing jobs. Five million manufacturing jobs have been lost during the Bush administration, hundreds of thousands of those in Ohio, in places such as Bryan and places such as Portsmouth, in places such as Xenia and Springfield. The President said he is willing to sign now a trade agreement with Peru and Panama, with labor and environmental standards in those trade agreements. That was the announcement the President recently made, the U.S. Trade Representative recently made. But go back and look. We have a history with this administration of not doing what they promised in trade agreements. Go back to an administration before, the North American Free Trade Agreement. They passed labor/environmental standards as a side agreement in those trade agreements, something probably they plan to do with Peru and Panama. Those side agreements for labor and environmental standards in the end meant absolutely nothing. Then go back to the year 2000, where both Houses of Congress passed-- I supported it--the trade agreement with Jordan. That trade agreement had strong labor and environmental standards. But one of the first things President Bush's Trade Representative did--back then it was Robert Zoellick--was to send a letter with the Jordanians regarding dispute resolution, saying they would not enforce, telling the Jordanian Government they were not going to make them enforce their labor and environmental standards. What happened, you got a good trade agreement with strong labor and environmental standards with Jordan. When you don't enforce those standards, you end up with Jordan being a sweatshop and an export platform, with mostly Bangladeshi workers imported into Jordan, making textiles and apparel, mostly apparel, sewing clothes, as a sweatshop that simply violated all we say we stand for with American values and all we said we stood for in this trade agreement. The point is, before we pass trade agreements, we need labor and environmental standards at the core of the agreement; we need commitment from the administration that they will, in fact, unlike in the past, enforce these labor and environmental standards; and we need benchmarks--as Senator Dorgan has said many times, benchmarks that allow us to gauge whether these trade agreements serve our national interest. We pass a trade agreement, and we then begin to measure its success. Does it mean more jobs or fewer jobs for American workers? Does it mean a trade increase in the trade deficit or does it mean a shrinking of the trade deficit? Does it mean an increase in income or does it mean stagnant incomes, as we have seen for so many American workers? We know profits are up. We know salaries are up for top management. But we also know wages for most American workers--especially manufacturing workers but most American workers--have been flat. This was brought home to me at Senator Stabenow's manufacturing summit a week or so ago when John Colm, a businessman from Cleveland, handed me a stack of auction notices about this high. There were 47 of them he had received since December 2006. These were auction notices from small companies which were selling off their assets in machinery, which were cannibalizing their plants, selling off at rock-bottom prices because they can't compete with cheap imports and can't compete because of this unlevel playing field because of trade agreements and because of tax law in this country that is simply so uneven. That is why, before we consider trade promotion authority, before we consider the Peru or Panama trade agreements, before we consider Colombia or South Korea trade agreements, we have to ask ourselves the question: Are these trade agreements fair to American workers? Will they help our communities? Will they help us strengthen the middle class or will these trade agreements continue to contribute to an exploding trade deficit, to lost jobs, to devastating communities all over my State of Ohio and all over the country? That is the fundamental question on trade policy--what does it do to strengthen the middle class? If it fails that test, these trade agreements should fail in the Senate. We will hear more in the upcoming months about these trade agreements and about U.S. trade policy and how we cannot just oppose bad trade agreements but bring forward trade agreements with benchmarks that help American workers and help to strengthen the middle class. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business.