Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, how many speakers does the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) have remaining and, Mr. Speaker, who has the right to close?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gene Green), an outstanding member of the Health Subcommittee.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel), a member of the Health Subcommittee.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, could the Chair inform both sides how much time is remaining?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, last year President Bush signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a one-sided plan to benefit multinational corporations at the expense of United States and Central American farmers, small businesses and workers. Every trade agreement negotiated by this administration has been ratified by Congress within 65 days, within about 2 months of the President's signing it. But CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, has languished in Congress for 1 year without a vote because this wrong-headed trade agreement offends both Republicans and Democrats. Just look at what has happened with our trade policy in the last dozen years. In 1992, the year I was first elected to Congress, we had in this country a trade deficit of $38 billion. That means that we imported $38 billion of goods more than we exported. $38 billion in 1992. Then NAFTA passed, the North American Free Trade Agreement, then permanent normal trade relations with China, then a whole 'nother series of trade agreements. Last year, our trade deficit was $618 billion, from $38 billion to $618 billion in 12 short years. Our trade policy clearly is bankrupt, clearly is not working for American workers, clearly is not working for our families, for our school systems, for our communities, and clearly is not working in the developing world for workers in those countries. It is the same old story. Now the President is asking us to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement. With each trade agreement that the President asks us to pass, the President and his allies promise stronger manufacturing in the United States, more jobs for Americans, more prosperity for the U.S. economy and for communities in this country and better wages for workers in developing countries. Yet with every single trade agreement, their promises fall by the wayside in favor of big business interests that send U.S. jobs overseas, that lock in low wages in the developing world and that exploit that cheap labor abroad. Madness, Mr. Speaker, is repeating the same action over and over and over and expecting a different result. Again, look at this trade deficit. Look what has happened after 12 years of failed trade policies. From a $38 billion trade deficit to $618 billion. President Bush, Sr., said that for every $1 billion of trade deficits, that translates into 12,000 jobs. If you have a surplus of $1 billion, you have 12,000 extra jobs. If you have a deficit of $1 billion, you lose 12,000 jobs. We have a deficit of $618 billion. Do the math. Mr. Speaker, what has happened with this trade deficit shows in this map. These red States are States which have lost, in just a 5-year period, 6-year period, more than 20 percent of their manufacturing. Michigan, 210,000 jobs. Illinois, 224,000 jobs lost. My State, the State of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), 216,000 jobs. The State of the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson), 50,000 jobs. The State of the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), 353,000 jobs. The State of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), 224,000. Hundreds of thousands of jobs lost with this trade policy, with this kind of export trade policy, import trade policy, where trade deficits continue to grow and grow and grow. That is why, Mr. Speaker, in the face of this growing bipartisan opposition, the administration, the Republican leadership has tried every trick in the book to pass CAFTA. They cannot argue our trade policy is working when you see this kind of manufacturing job loss. So what they do, they first try to link CAFTA with helping democracy in the developing world and they say, CAFTA will help us fight the war on terror. Ten years of NAFTA, 10 years of CAFTA's dysfunctional cousin NAFTA, have done nothing to improve border security with Mexico, so that argument does not sell. Then, 2 weeks ago, the United States Chamber of Commerce flew on a junket the six presidents from the CAFTA countries around our country, hoping they would sell CAFTA to the American people and to the Congress and to the American media. They flew them to Albuquerque and Los Angeles. They flew them to Cincinnati, Ohio, in my State and New York and Miami. Again, they failed. At the end of this trip, one of the presidents, the Costa Rican president said, Hey, my country is not ratifying CAFTA unless an independent commission would show that it would not hurt working families and the poor in my country of Costa Rica. So that is not working. Calling out that we have got to do something about the war on terror and that is why we are doing this agreement, that did not work. Bringing the Central American presidents to the United States, that did not work. So what is next? The Republican leadership is opening the bank. They are making deals. To my friends on that side of the aisle, they are promising bridges, they are promising highways, they are promising some of the sleaziest deals this Congress has ever seen. They are basically buying votes in this Congress in order to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement. We saw it in 2002 with fast track authority when the President opened the bank and bought votes then. We are not going to stand for it this time. Mr. Speaker, what really makes sense instead is a trade policy that lifts workers up in rich and poor countries alike while it is respecting human rights. The United States with its unrivaled purchasing power and its enormous economic clout is in a unique position to help empower poor workers in developing countries while promoting prosperity at home. Vote ``no'' on CAFTA. Renegotiate a better agreement.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) for her eloquence in opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. She obviously understands this much better than some of my other colleagues who have not been so eloquent and thoughtful in their comments about this agreement. I rise tonight to address the House about the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Last year President Bush signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a one-sided plan, as the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) said, that will lead to more outsourcing. That is what this plan is all about, and not a plan to export American products or help American industry. It is a one-sided plan to benefit multinational corporations at the expense of the United States and Central American workers, small businesses and farmers. Every trade agreement negotiated by this administration has been ratified by Congress within 65 days of its signing. In other words, when President Bush's United States trade representative negotiated the Moroccan trade agreement, when the President signed the Australia trade agreement, the Singapore trade agreement and the Chilean trade agreement, all four of those trade agreements, upon signature of the President, were voted on by this Congress and passed within 60 days. The Central American Free Trade Agreement, which we will discuss for a few moments tonight, has languished in Congress for nearly 1 year without a vote because this wrong-headed trade agreement offends large numbers of Republicans and Democrats in this House, and a significantly higher percentage in the United States of America. Look at what has happened with our trade policy in the past decade. I was elected to Congress in 1992, 13 years ago. The year I was elected, the United States had a trade deficit of $38 billion. That means our country imported $38 billion more goods than we exported. Today, or last year in 2004, our country's trade deficit was $618 billion. So it went from $38 billion to $618 billion. So what is the President's response to that and what is the Republican leadership's response? Let us do more trade agreements. As if they are working. It does not make sense. Opponents to the Central American Free Trade Agreement understand these numbers. We know what has happened. We can look at the numbers in 1992 when it was $38 billion. The next year Congress passed the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the deficit began to grow. It exceeded $100 billion in 1995. A few years later, it exceeded $200 billion. Around this time Congress passed the China trade agreement, the China PNTR, Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China. Then our trade deficit passed $300 billion, approaching $400 billion. In 2003 it exceed $500 billion; 2004 it exceeded $600 billion. And we are on a path in 2005 to see our trade deficit continue to explode to over $700 billion. It is the same old story. Every time there is a trade agreement, the President of the United States promises more jobs for Americans, promises more manufacturing done in our country, promises a higher standard of living for Americans, promises better wages for workers in developing countries, and promises a higher standard of living in poor countries. Yet with every trade deficit, every single time, NAFTA, China, and every other trade agreement, with every trade agreement the promises fall by the wayside in favor of large business interests, not small manufacturing, machine shop owners, but big business interests. They fall by the wayside in favor of big businesses interests that send U.S. jobs overseas and exploit cheap labor abroad. This chart, this is the last 6-or-so years and what has happened to manufacturing in our country. The States in red are States that have lost a particularly high percentage, more than 20 percent of their manufacturing. All of these States have lost more than 20 percent of their manufacturing jobs as these trade agreements have kicked in and taken effect. Michigan, 210,000; Illinois, 224,000; Ohio, 216,000; Pennsylvania, 199,600; New York, 220,000; North Carolina, 228,000. Smaller States, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, West Virginia, Maine, and Massachusetts, have lost somewhere in the vicinity of 50,000 to 150,000 manufacturing jobs. Mr. Speaker, these are just numbers. These numbers may say, okay, trade policy is not working, that is pretty clear, but put a human face with these numbers. Every time a community, Elyria, Ohio, in my district, when York manufacturing shut down and moved some jobs to other States, most of those jobs to Mexico, 700 families lost their major source of income. Those families were hurt. Those children in those families were hurt. The school district in Elyria was hurt. Police and fire protection in those communities are cut back. These numbers, whether it is 100,000; 200,000 in Washington State; or 35,000 in Oklahoma; 200,000 in Texas; 72,000 in Florida, these are numbers; but there are human faces with these numbers. Every time a manufacturing plant closes and moves overseas, children are hurt, families are hurt, schools are hurt, communities are hurt. It does not make sense. In the face of growing bipartisan opposition, the administration and Republican leadership have tried every trick in the book to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement. First of all, the administration, when they saw the merits of the argument were simply not working with Congress, the American people and this Congress rejected out of hand for the last 12 months, that is why we have not voted on the Central American Free Trade Agreement for a whole year, it is clear they rejected out of hand those arguments that the administration and the largest corporations in our country were making about the Central American Free Trade Agreement. So what did the administration do? They linked the Central American Free Trade Agreement to fighting the war on terror. They said that if we do not pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement, it would cause problems in fighting the war on terror. Well, that argument, nobody really bought that argument. Republicans and Democrats did not buy it, in part because 10 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement has done nothing to improve border security between the United States and Mexico. That argument simply does not sell. So the administration tried something else. First their arguments were not working. Then they tried to play the terrorism card, that we need this trade agreement with these six countries in order to fight the war on terror. The next thing they tried was 2 weeks ago the United States Chamber of Commerce, allies of the President on passing this agreement, representing the largest companies in America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce put together a junket for those presidents to travel to the United States. Those six presidents, five Central American presidents and the Dominican Republic president flew around the United States hoping to sell CAFTA. Large businesses in the U.S. had not changed the American people's minds. The President's arguments were not working, so these six presidents traveled to Albuquerque, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Cincinnati, Ohio in my State. And, finally, they returned to Washington. But again they failed. The Costa Rican president announced that his country would not ratify CAFTA unless an independent commission could determine that the agreement would not hurt working people in Costa Rica. As these six presidents flew around the country, they did not convince the newspapers, the American public, or Congress. And one of their own said I am not so sure we should ratify this agreement either. Now the next step is the most powerful Republican in the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the House majority leader, joined by the Committee on Ways and Means chairman, the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), said there would be a vote on CAFTA by Memorial Day, which is the 1-year anniversary of the President signing the Central American Free Trade Agreement. We are barely 1 week away from that 1-year anniversary, and still no vote in sight. I would add that this agreement, unlike every other trade agreement, has been languishing in this Congress. Every other trade agreement sent by President Bush was passed within 60 days. This trade agreement has been 11 months and 20-some days still without a vote because the people of this country, in this Congress, the people's representatives, simply do not buy that our trade policy is working. Mr. Speaker, look at these numbers. How can you make the argument that trade policy in America is working when we have gone from a $38 billion to a $618 billion trade deficit in only 12 years when we have pursued these kinds of NAFTA-like trade policies. Understand, CAFTA rhymes with NAFTA for a reason. CAFTA is very similar to NAFTA. It is the same kind of trade agreement; we will see the same kind of results. It is simply not working. Last month two dozen Democrats and Republicans in Congress joined more than 150 business groups and labor organizations on the steps of one of the House office buildings saying vote ``no'' on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Last week more than 400 workers and Members of Congress gathered again in front of the Capitol saying vote ``no'' on CAFTA. Why? It is simple. Because Republicans and Democrats, business and labor groups know what the administration refuses to admit. What the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) said, CAFTA is about one thing and one thing only: CAFTA is about access to cheap labor. We know that CAFTA is about access to cheap labor simply because Central American countries cannot afford to buy American goods. Let me explain what that means. About 5 years ago, Mr. Speaker, I flew at my own expense to McAllen, Texas, rented a car and went across the border to Reynosa, Mexico. I wanted to see the face of globalization. I wanted to see what the North American Free Trade Agreement after 5 or 6 years in effect, what it really meant for our country, what it meant to Mexico, what it meant to our relations, and on the border. I went to Reynosa, Mexico. I visited a couple who worked at General Electric Mexico, 3 miles from the United States. Their home was a small shack, maybe 20 feet by 15 feet. They lived in a home with no electricity, no running water, with dirt floors. When it rained hard, the dirt floors turned to mud. As I walked around their neighborhood, I saw other shacks that looked a lot like theirs. Amazingly enough, I could tell where the workers worked because their shacks were built, their homes were built out of packing material from the companies for which they worked. Cardboard boxes, crates, wooden platforms, that is how they constructed their roof and walls and their homes. As I walked around their neighborhood, I saw a ditch behind their home that was maybe 4 feet wide. Who knows what human waste and industrial waste was running through this ditch. Children were playing nearby. The American Medical Association said the area around the U.S- Mexican border is the most toxic place in the western hemisphere. We then went to a General Motors plant not far from these workers' homes. The General Motors plant looked just like a General Motors plant in Ohio. It looks just like the Lordstown plant in northeast Ohio. It looked just like a Chrysler plant in Twinsburg. It looked just like a Ford plant in Avon Lake or Lorain, Ohio. As you walked through this plant, it was modern; the technology was up to date. The floors were clean; the workers were working hard. There was one difference between the plant in Mexico and the plant in Lorain, Ohio. The difference was there was no parking lot at the plant in Mexico. Why? Because Mexican workers were not making enough, 3 miles from the United States, were not making enough to buy the cars that they make, 3 miles from the United States. You could go halfway around the world to a Motorola plant in Malaysia, the workers were not earning enough to buy the cell phones that they make. You could come halfway back around the world to Costa Rica to a Disney plant, the workers were not earning enough to buy the toys for their children that they were making. You could fly halfway around the world again to the People's Republic of China, to Communist China to a Nike plant, and the workers were not making enough to buy the shoes that they make. The Central American Free Trade Agreement represents that kind of trade policy. Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Hondurans make about one-tenth what Americans make. An American makes about $38,000 average a year. In many cases, middle-class Americans make enough to buy a car, to buy a home, to send their kids to college, to purchase washing machines and to purchase appliances and to purchase carpet and all the things that they buy. Unfortunately, Guatemalans and Hondurans and Nicaraguans, because their wages are so low, because the global economy is not working for them, they simply cannot afford to make these purchases. So this Central American Free Trade Agreement, it is about sending American jobs to Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. It is about sending these jobs there where these workers simply are not going to make enough money to buy American products. It is not about those people in those countries purchasing goods made in the United States. We are losing manufacturing jobs. Our overall trade deficit continues to increase. You can bet that Guatemalan workers cannot afford to buy cars made in Ohio. Nicaraguan workers cannot afford to buy steel made in West Virginia. Honduran workers cannot afford to buy software made in Seattle or prime beef cuts from Nebraska or apparel from Georgia or textiles from North Carolina, simply because in these trade agreements we are doing nothing to lift up wages in these six countries. No enforceable labor standards, no enforceable environmental standards, no efforts by the Central American Free Trade Agreement to lift up worker standards so those workers can join the middle class and they can begin to buy American products. These trade agreements are all about shipping jobs overseas, are all about outsourcing labor, are all about American companies and Taiwanese companies and South Korean companies and other countries' companies going to Central America to exploit cheap labor and to exploit those workers. There is a falling minimum wage, the ongoing nightmare of abject poverty for these workers despite backbreaking work and deplorable working conditions. CAFTA's nations are not only among the poorest countries, they are among the smallest economies. The entire economic output of these six CAFTA countries, five in Central America and the Dominican Republic, the entire combined economic output is $62 billion. That is equivalent to the economic output of Columbus, Ohio; equivalent to the economic output of Memphis, Tennessee; or equivalent to the economic output of Orlando, Florida. CAFTA, as I said, it is not about exporting American production or goods, it is not about Americans making things and selling them to Central America, it is about access to cheap labor and exporting American jobs much more than it ever is exporting U.S. goods. As I said, the average worker in Nicaragua earns $3,800 a year. That is simply not enough to buy American products and it is not enough to mean any kind of exports from the United States to those countries. Frankly, the Central American Free Trade Agreement should be called the Central American Free Labor Agreement. That is what it is all about. It is not about trade. It is about outsourcing cheap labor. I mentioned a minute ago that these presidents from these five Central American countries and the Dominican Republic traveled to the United States on a tour to Albuquerque and Cincinnati and to Los Angeles and to Washington and Miami. With all due respect to the Central American leaders who toured our Nation 2 weeks ago, and we should welcome them, what they did not say and what millions of us know already as they campaigned for this agreement is that millions of their workers in addition to tens of millions of American workers simply do not like this trade agreement. What they did not tell reporters is that more than 8,000 Guatemalan workers protested against CAFTA in March. Two of them were killed by government security forces. They did not tell us that tens of thousands of El Salvadorans protested CAFTA 2 years ago. They did not tell us about 18,000 letters sent last year to the Honduran congress by Honduran workers that decried this dysfunctional cousin of the North American Free Trade Agreement. They did not tell us about the 10,000 people in Nicaragua who protested CAFTA in 2003. They did not tell us about the 30,000 CAFTA protesters this past fall in Costa Rica. They did not tell us that literally hundreds of thousands of workers have protested the Central American Free Trade Agreement, workers in Central America, in more than 45 demonstrations in the last 3 years. Trade pacts like NAFTA and CAFTA enable companies to exploit cheap labor, then import those products back to the United States. I repeat, that is what these trade agreements are about. They are about shutting down American factories, moving these factories to Central America as they did to Mexico, exploiting workers, paying them barely a livable wage let alone a living wage, paying them barely a livable wage, then sending products back into the United States. As a result, America is bleeding manufacturing jobs and running unprecedented trade deficits. Again, look at the trade deficit, from $38 billion to $618 billion in a dozen years. President Bush, Sr., back in 1992 when we had a trade deficit of $38 billion, he said, $1 billion in trade deficit translates into 12,000 lost jobs. So if you have a trade surplus of $1 billion, you increase 12,000 jobs. If you have a deficit of $1 billion, you lose 12,000 jobs. Multiply that by $618 billion and you see the kind of job loss, perhaps as much as 7 million jobs lost because of our manufacturing and trade policy in this country. What we are seeing, Mr. Speaker, is America is bleeding with our trade deficit, and bleeding manufacturing jobs from our country. Again, all these States in red in the last 5 years have lost more than 20 percent of their manufacturing jobs. All the States in blue have lost at least 15 percent of their manufacturing jobs. Basically every large State, every single large State in this country: California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Every single large State has lost at least 15 percent, one out of six manufacturing jobs in this country in the last 5 years. Again, those manufacturing jobs, losing those jobs, they are not just numbers. They are about families, they are about children, they are about schools and they are about communities and police and fire and making our communities prosperous. Gregory Mankiw, the President's former Chief Economist, portrayed the exporting of jobs as inevitable and desirable. He said, ``When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to provide it domestically.'' Unfortunately, that is the attitude of the administration. That is the attitude of people who have written this trade policy that have led to these kinds of manufacturing job losses and have led to these kinds of trade deficits and that is the attitude of people who are pushing the Central American Free Trade Agreement. What really instead, Mr. Speaker, makes sense is a trade policy that lifts workers up in rich countries like ours, in poor countries like Costa Rica and Honduras and Guatemala and the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, while respecting human rights and democratic principles. The United States with its unrivaled purchasing power, the greatest in history, and its enormous economic clout, again the greatest in history, we as a Nation are in a unique position to help empower poor workers in developing countries while promoting prosperity at home. When the world's poorest people can buy American products rather than just make them, then we will know, Mr. Speaker, finally that our trade policies are working.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, last year President Bush signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a one-sided plan to benefit the largest corporations in the world at the expense of American workers and farmers, and the expense of Central American workers, farmers, and small businesses. Every trade agreement negotiated by this administration has been ratified by Congress within 65 days of the President's signing it. CAFTA has languished in Congress for nearly 1 year without a vote because this wrong-headed trade agreement offends both Republicans and Democrats. Just look at what has happened with our trade policy in the last decade. In 1992, the year I was elected to Congress, we in this country had a $38 billion trade deficit. Today, 12 years later, our trade deficit is $618 billion. From $38 billion, a dozen years later to $618 billion. It is clear our trade policy simply is not working. Opponents to CAFTA know that simply it is an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which clearly did not work for our country. It is the same old story. With every trade agreement, the President promises more jobs for Americans, growth in manufacturing, more exports, raising the standard of living in the developing world, better wages for workers in the developing world. Every time it comes out differently. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and then expecting a different outcome. Why will this trade agreement not work? Look at the average wages in the CAFTA countries. In United States the average wage is $38,000. El Salvador is $4,800. Honduras is $2,600. Nicaragua is $2,300. The average Nicaraguan worker is not going to buy cars made in Ohio. The Guatemalan worker is not going to be able to buy steel from West Virginia. The Honduran worker is not going to be able to buy software from Seattle or prime cuts of beef from Nebraska or textiles or apparel from North Carolina or South Carolina or Georgia. This trade agreement is about giving big business what it wants: access to cheap labor. They cannot buy our goods; but American business can move its production, its companies, outsource them to Central America, and it costs us jobs. That is why, Mr. Speaker, there is such strong bipartisan opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The administration is pulling out all stops because they know they are going to lose this vote. The administration has attempted to link CAFTA with helping democracy in the developing world and fighting the war on terror. Ten years of NAFTA has done nothing to improve border security between Mexico and our country. So that argument does not sell. Then last week the U.S. Chamber of Commerce flew on a Chamber of Commerce junket the six presidents from the CAFTA countries around our Nation, hoping they might be able to sell Americans and the U.S. press and Members of Congress on the Central American Free Trade Agreement, but again they failed. In fact, the Costa Rican president, after traveling the United States, announced his country simply would not ratify CAFTA unless an independent commission could determine that agreement will not hurt the poor and working families in his country. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the most powerful Republican in the House, majority leader, said there would be a vote on CAFTA within a year of the President's signing, that is, by Memorial Day, coming next week. As we can see by this calendar, we are barely a week away from that deadline, but still no vote in sight because there is simply not enough support for CAFTA. It is dead on arrival in this House. Last month, two dozen Democrats and Republicans in Congress joined 150 business and labor groups saying no on CAFTA. Last week more than 400 union workers and Members of Congress gathered in front of the Capitol again saying no on the Central American Free Trade Agreement, because Republicans and Democrats, business and labor groups know what the administration refuses to admit, and that is that CAFTA is about one thing: it is about access to cheap labor and exploiting workers in the six CAFTA countries. Congress must throw out this dysfunctional cousin of NAFTA and negotiate a trade agreement that will lift up workers in Central America while promoting prosperity here at home. If we throw this agreement CAFTA out, and then negotiate a new central American Free Trade Agreement that really works for workers in both countries, we will know our trade policy is succeeding. Only when workers in the poor countries can afford to not just make American products, but also to buy American products, will we know that our trade policy has, in fact, succeeded.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the Special Order time of the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, President Bush, Senator Frist, and the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) are in a quest for absolute power in Washington, even if it means corrupting our government and the vision of our Founding Fathers. The White House has manufactured a judicial crisis. Since the President took office, the Senate confirmed 208 of his judicial nominees and turned back only 10, a 95 percent confirmation rate. That rate is the highest approval rating for any President in modern times, higher than Reagan, Bush Senior and Clinton. The President presides over the lowest court vacancy rate in 25 years. But 95 percent is not good enough for this White House. They want to have it all. That is simply not how it is supposed to work, and America sees this for what it is, an extreme power grab by the majority party. Our country knows that our country works best when no political party has absolute power.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Taking back my time, it is no surprise, or no coincidence, that as this trade deficit has increased from $38 billion the year I first ran for Congress 12\1/2\ years ago to last year's deficit of $618 billion, that is the same trajectory where we have seen health benefits cut, where we have seen workers in our country losing their pensions. When we lose these manufacturing jobs, every time a Ford worker loses his job or her job in Avon Lake or in Cleveland, that is often one fewer person in Ohio with health benefits, one less person that has a pension. These trade agreements clearly have pulled down the standard of living for way too many of my colleague's constituents and way too many of mine, way too many people in North Carolina where textiles and the apparel job loss have devastated their part of the country. I want to make a prediction. My colleague made a statement a minute ago that in one of the Central American countries with whom we have negotiated this deal that legislation was passed in the middle of the night. I will make a prediction. Based on a lot of facts, the facts that every major piece of legislation, or virtually every major piece of legislation this Congress has considered the last 2 years, the debate started about this time of night, maybe even a little later, started about midnight, started around 1 o'clock, the debates on these very important issues, Head Start, money for veterans' benefits, money for education, $87 billion for Iraq, the major tax cuts, Medicare and the trade promotion authority. The last big trade agreement this Congress voted for, we voted in the middle of the night. The roll call was left open. It is normally only 15 minutes. The roll call was left open for well over an hour as the majority leader, Tom DeLay, strong- armed, cajoled, offered with a carrot, threatened with a stick, until he got two North Carolina Congressmen to change their votes. We have seen that over and over. My prediction is that when the Central American Free Trade Agreement, if it comes to this Congress in the next 6 weeks, even though it is already past this deadline, this self- imposed deadline, this 1-year anniversary of the signing of CAFTA, whenever it comes, either by the end of this month or the end of next month, you can bet that that is going to be a middle-of-the-night vote where there is incredible political pressure, where there are threats, where there are transfers in some cases, promises on one bill, on the Medicare bill, promises of campaign cash on the House floor as claimed by one of my colleagues, a Republican from Michigan, where there are all kinds of goodies offered to this Member of Congress or that Member of Congress to get a vote. I am just terrified that even though the American people clearly do not like the Central American Free Trade Agreement, even though the American people recognize the kind of job loss that our State of Ohio and so many other States, especially the States in red, have been hit the hardest, with all this job loss, with all this opposition from the American people and from Members of Congress that the administration will do what it did with trade promotion authority and offer all kinds of things to these Members of Congress to get them to change their vote and vote the opposite of what they have promised and vote the opposite of what their constituents asked them to.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. As the gentleman was talking, I am thinking about what he said a few nights ago. There is no protection for the environment, for workers, but there is very good protection in this bill for a group that is very powerful in this body and that is the prescription drug industry. My colleague spoke last week about what the drug industry did in Central America, what the United States Trade Rep did on behalf of the drug industry that gave them a whole lot more rights than workers get, a whole lot more protections than the environment get. Would my colleague talk a little bit about that?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Taking back my time for a moment, as we talked about a week or so ago, while the six presidents were flying around the United States on a junket paid for by the Chamber of Commerce and then met with President Bush and all, they mentioned a lot of things about CAFTA but they never mentioned the kind of opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, not just from American workers but from workers in every one of those countries. There were demonstrations and protests of thousands of people in virtually every capital city in the six countries. To the point that the president of Costa Rica, as I said in my earlier remarks, the president of Costa Rica now is saying he does not want to see this ratified until he sees some real guarantees in this agreement that the poor in his country, and in his country there are a large number of very poor people, and the workers in his country will not be left out of the agreement. So far, they are left out and he is dissatisfied by that. But I think when those presidents have come home, both when they left, they saw these kinds of demonstrations, huge opposition among the people of those countries, and that huge opposition has continued. This Congress should simply not believe when these six presidents are walking around after their Chamber of Commerce tour, when they came to our offices and argued for this Central American free labor agreement, my colleagues need to understand that just because those six presidents were for it does not mean their countrymen and countrywomen were.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, nearly a year ago, President Bush signed the Central America Free Trade Agreement, a one-sided plan to benefit multinational corporations at the expense of American workers, U.S. workers, and Central American workers, businesses, small farmers, a whole bunch of us in all those countries, both in Central America and here. Every trade agreement negotiated by the Bush administration, every trade agreement passed by this Congress since George Bush took office, Singapore, Chile, Morocco and Australia, every one of those trade agreements was voted upon in Congress within a couple of months of the time President Bush signed the agreement. CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, some call it the Central American Free Labor Agreement, and you will understand that in a moment, has languished in Congress for nearly 1 year without a vote because this wrong-headed trade agreement offends both Republicans and Democrats. Just look at what has happened with our trade policy in the last decade. In 1992, the first year I was elected to Congress, we had a trade deficit in this country of only $38 billion. That was in 1992. Last year our trade deficit was $618 billion. It went from $38 billion, and a dozen years later $618 billion. It is hard to argue that our trade policy is working with that kind of gargantuan swelling budget deficit. Opponents to the Central American Free Trade Agreement know in fact it is simply an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which clearly did not work for our country. It is the same old story. Every time there is a trade agreement, the President says it will mean more jobs for our Nation. The President says it will mean more manufacturing in the United States. The President says it will mean better wages for workers in the developing world, and as their standard of living goes up they buy more things from the United States. Yet, with every trade agreement, from NAFTA through China, through every other trade agreement, those promises from the President fall by the wayside in favor of big business interests that simply send U.S. jobs overseas and export cheap labor abroad. According to President Bush, Senior, every billion dollars in trade, surplus or deficit, translates into 12,000 jobs. So if you have a $2 billion trade surplus, you have a net increase in your country of $2 billion, times 12,000 jobs. You have a 24,000 job surplus increase if you have a $2 billion trade surplus. But instead, we had a $38 billion trade deficit 12 years ago. Today we have a $618 billion trade deficit. So according to the way that President Bush Sr. figured out what these trade agreements mean, that means a job loss of 7.3 million jobs to our Nation. You can see pretty much what that meant because many of those jobs, a large number of those jobs, are manufacturing jobs. Look at the red. The red here means greater than 20 percent manufacturing job loss in our Nation in only the last 6-or-so years. You can look at almost all the Northeast, much of the Midwest, all the textile manufacturing from the South, steel and auto manufacturing here, and steel in these areas, textiles in these areas, in State after State after State. You see this kind of manufacturing job loss. So we are going to do more of these trade agreements so we see more manufacturing job loss? That is what the Central American Free Trade Agreement is all about. In the face of growing bipartisan opposition, and make no mistake about it, the Central America free labor agreement, Central American Free Trade Agreement, call it what you want, that agreement is dead on arrival when it comes to this Congress because large numbers of Democrats and Republicans oppose this agreement. That is why the President, unlike all of the other trade agreements which were voted on almost immediately upon the President's signature, that is why this trade agreement has been languishing for 1 year. For 11 months and 20-some days, it has not been voted on. But this year the administration is trying every trick in the book to pass the Central American Free Labor Agreement. For instance, the administration is linking CAFTA to helping democracy in the developing world. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of State Zoellick, both said the Central American Free Trade Agreement will help in the war on terror. Figure that out. Ten years of NAFTA, 10 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement, has done nothing to improve border security between the United States and Mexico. That argument simply does not sell. The North American Free Trade Agreement did nothing for border security. We saw this kind of job loss since NAFTA, this kind of trade deficit since NAFTA, from $38 billion 12 years ago to a $618 billion trade deficit last year. So the President's people tried to argue, tried to link the passage of CAFTA to making the world safe against terrorism. That did not work, so now just last week the United States Chamber of Commerce flew on a junket the six presidents from Central America and the Dominican Republic around our Nation hoping they might be able to sell the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Again they failed. But they sent these six presidents to Cincinnati, to Los Angeles, to Albuquerque, back to Washington where they had a Chamber of Commerce reception at their very fancy headquarters, but that did not work because those six Central American presidents are not strong believers in CAFTA themselves. The Costa Rican president, for instance, announced his country would not ratify CAFTA unless an independent commission determines that the agreement will not hurt the working poor of his country. Understand what CAFTA is all about. The average income for an American is about $38,000. The average income for a Honduran or a Nicaraguan is less than one-tenth that. So think about that. A $38,000 average income for an American. And on that income many Americans can buy a washer and a dryer, and can begin to purchase a home, perhaps. Many Americans can buy a car and begin to put away in some cases a little money for a child for college or at least borrow some money and get them to college. But on $2,000 or $3,000 an average wage in Honduras or Nicaragua, they are not going to buy cars made in Ohio and washing machines made in the U.S. or steel from West Virginia or software from Seattle. They are not going to be able to buy prime beef from Nebraska. They are not going to be able to buy textiles or apparel from Georgia. The fact is that this trade agreement is not about the U.S. selling products to Central America. It is about U.S. companies looking for cheap labor and outsourcing those jobs to Latin America. That is why we have this kind of manufacturing job crisis. That is why we have this trade deficit that went from $38 billion 12 years ago to $618 billion today. Get a look at these manufacturing job losses: 210,000 jobs lost in Michigan; 216,000 jobs lost in Ohio; 228,000 jobs lost, and these are just manufacturing jobs, not to mention what happens when a manufacturing job is lost. If a manufacturing job is lost in Lorain, Ohio, that means not just that man or woman loses a job. It means that family can no longer send their kids to college. It means that family can barely get along. They might lose their house. It means that town has lost a factory, which means higher school taxes; it means a layoff of police and fire. It means that education suffers. This kind of job loss, 200,000-plus in Ohio; 200,000-plus in Michigan; 200,000-plus in Illinois; 228,000-plus in North Carolina; 50,000 in Mississippi; 75,000 in Alabama; 100,000 in Georgia, that in most cases is about one in five manufacturing jobs in the State. These numbers may not mean anything to Members of Congress; they are just numbers. But think about the families that lose these jobs. Think about the breadwinner coming home and saying to his wife, we lost this job, how do we clothe our kids? How do we pay for medical care, and what are we doing about the police and fire in our neighborhoods because this plant is shutting down? That is what this trade agreement is about. They are about workers in our country, and they are about workers in the developing world in Latin America. About 5 years ago at my own expense, I flew to McAllen, Texas. I wanted to see the face of NAFTA. I knew all of the statistics about NAFTA. I knew the lost manufacturing jobs and what it did to my community in O'Leary, Ohio; but I wanted to see what it did in Mexico. So I rented a car in McAllen, Texas, and went across the border to Reynosa, Mexico, just to look at the face of free trade and what NAFTA had done along the U.S.-Mexican border. I went to a home, and this was a shack maybe 30 feet by 20 feet, dirt floors, no electricity, no running water. This dirt floor turned to mud when it rained. The husband and wife both worked at General Electric Mexico 3 miles from the United States. If you walked back behind their home in this colonia, you would see other shacks that looked a lot like theirs. But as you walked through the neighborhood, as the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) knows, and he lives on a border State, you can tell where these workers work because their homes are constructed out of packing material, wooden crates and packing materials from the companies at which they worked, or from boxes to the suppliers for which they work. I saw a ditch with two by fours running across it. Who knows what was running through the ditch, human waste, industrial waste. Children were playing in this ditch because children will play wherever children play. The American Medical Association said this area along the U.S.- Mexican border is the most toxic place in the western hemisphere, and yet these workers are working at General Electric Mexico 3 miles from the United States each making 90 cents an hour. Nearby their home, I visited a General Motors plant. General Motors Mexico looks not much different from a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, or a Ford plant in Avon Lake, or a Chrysler plant in Twinsburg, Ohio. The workers are working hard, the plant is clean, the plant is modern. This plant in Mexico is more modern than many in the United States, but there is one difference between the plant in Mexico and the plant in the United States, and that is the plant in the Mexico does not have a parking lot because the workers cannot afford to buy the cars they make. You can fly halfway around the world to Malaysia and to a Motorola plant and the workers cannot afford to buy the cell phones they make, or fly back halfway across the world to Costa Rica and go to a Disney plant and the workers cannot afford to buy the Disney toys for their children, or fly to China and go to a Nike plant and the workers cannot afford to buy the shoes they make. Mr. Speaker, that is what makes our country great is because of trade unions. Because of a free democracy in this country, Americans share in the wealth. If you work for General Motors, a local hardware store, if you are a teacher, a nurse, you are creating value and creating wealth for your employer. If you are a private sector employee, you are creating wealth for the company. You share some of that wealth. You get health benefits and a decent wage. You can buy a house and a car. If you work in a service job, you are creating value for those people whom you serve, and you get some wealth. You share in some of the wealth of the value that you create. That is why our system works. That is why these trade agreements do not work, because when we move these manufacturing jobs, the 216,000 in Ohio, a heck of a lot of those ended up in Mexico, and darn near all of them ended up as part of our trade deficit to China or Mexico or to somewhere else across the world. Whenever those jobs are lost, they are typically jobs that are transferred; but those jobs do not create wealth for the people that get them in the developing world because they simply are not paid enough. If they are Ford workers in Mexico, they are not paid enough to buy the cars that they made. That is why these trade agreements do not work. The most powerful Republican Member of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority leader, joined by the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), said there would be a vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement by Memorial Day. That marks the 1-year anniversary. Remember at the beginning of my remarks I said all four trade agreements that this Congress has voted on since President Bush has been President, the trade agreements for Australia, Chile, Morocco and Singapore, all four were voted on within 60 days after the President signed them. This trade agreement, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, has not been voted on for 11\1/2\ months. Members can see the CAFTA countdown, and in only a week and a half the Central American Free Trade Agreement will celebrate its 1-year anniversary. That tells me they simply do not have the votes to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement. So at the same time the self-imposed deadline from the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), means they may call a vote before the end of the month. We are hearing they are going to delay it. I ask, Mr. Speaker, as we can see by this calendar, a week away from the deadline with no vote in sight, what this should tell my fellow Members of Congress is that come May 27, we should scrap the Central American Free Trade Agreement, not that we should never do a trade agreement, not that we are against any kind of trade. We should scrap this trade agreement and renegotiate another trade agreement that will work for the American people. Last month two dozen Republicans and Democrats in Congress joined more than 150 business groups and labor organizations in this city saying vote ``no'' on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Last week more than 400 union workers and Members of Congress gathered in front of the Capitol saying vote ``no'' on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Why, because Republicans and Democrats, business and labor groups, know what the administration refuses to admit, and that is CAFTA is not about selling products abroad or exporting American goods because that simply has not worked. CAFTA is about one thing: it is about access to cheap labor and the outsourcing that goes with it. Congress must throw out this dysfunctional cousin of NAFTA on this deadline this month, must throw out this dysfunctional cousin of NAFTA and negotiate a trade agreement that will lift workers up in Central America while promoting prosperity here in our country. Instead of a loss for American workers and the kind of job loss we have seen in State after State after State, instead of a continuing to increase trade deficit, from $38 billion to over $100 billion to over $200 billion, to over $300 billion, to over $400 billion, last year in 2003 over $500 billion, now a $600 billion trade deficit in this country, instead of these continued trade deficits, continued manufacturing job loss, Congress should throw out this dysfunctional cousin of NAFTA and negotiate a trade agreement that will lift up workers in Central America while promoting prosperity here at home. Come May 28, we should bury the Central American Free Trade Agreement. We should renegotiate a new CAFTA so that we can negotiate and trade more with our neighbors on terms that will help lift up workers in all six of the NAFTA countries and in the United States. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) for his leadership on this whole array of issues. I would summarize by echoing what he said, that as the CAFTA countdown, as CAFTA is buried at the end of this month, the 1-year anniversary of CAFTA, it is important as we defeat CAFTA that we look at all of those issues that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) talked about, and especially that we think about a new trade agreement with Central American countries that lifts workers in both, in all seven of our countries, lifts workers' standards, lifts environmental standards, helps workers and families and communities in all of the Central American Free Trade Agreement countries, and in our country. It can be a win-win for all of us, instead of the kind of downward slide that we have seen in our trade policy.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Slightly over that.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I will close as I just listen to my friend talk about seeing this country as he has seen it up close, and we all have seen it. Again, these are all numbers, 200,000, 200,000, 57,000, trade deficits of billions and tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars; they are all numbers. But I think almost every Member of Congress, those of us that really get out in our communities, and that is most of us on both sides of the aisle, really have seen the kind of pain that people suffer when someone loses a job after being in a plant for 30 years and loses their pension or loses their health benefits, and they are 58 years old and they cannot get Medicare yet. Or they are 35 years old and they cannot send their kid to school, they had been saving a little bit of money: all that that means for those children, for those families, for those school districts that have lost that revenue when a plant closes, for those communities that can no longer protect their citizens with adequate police and fire protection. These are real people, these are real jobs, real communities, real people, real dreams, real lives. When I think about our trade policy and what we have done, and our trade policy has always been for years to outsource jobs, to lose our manufacturing jobs, shut these plants down, encourage these companies to hire cheap labor in the developing world, do not really give those people any chance, because they are not paying them enough money. My definition of successful trade policy is that when the workers in poor countries cannot just make American products, make products that they export back into the United States, but that those workers can actually buy products made in the United States, then we will see a trade policy which lifts those workers up so they have a decent standard of living in Guatemala or in India or in Mexico, and, at the same time, lifts our workers up so we can continue our strong food safety standards, environmental standards, worker rights, and wages in our country.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, 1 year ago, in late May, 2004 President Bush signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a trade agreement that extends the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, to 5 Central American countries and the Caribbean country of the Dominican Republic. That trade agreement, coupled with the President's next trade agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, will double the population of the North American Free Trade Agreement, double the size of NAFTA, and quadruple the number of low income workers, poverty wage workers that now live in NAFTA countries. Normally, when a trade agreement is signed by President Bush, that trade agreement comes in front of Congress almost immediately. Since President Bush has taken office there have been 4, Morocco, Australia, Chile and Singapore. Each of those agreements has been voted on within about 2 months of the President's signature. However, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, some call it the Central American Free Labor Agreement, because it really is all about low income workers, not about selling American products to Central America. The Central American Free Trade Agreement has not been sent to Congress; has not been voted on, even though President Bush signed it 11 and a half months ago, even longer ago than that actually, 11 months and 20 some days. And the reason is simple that it has not come in front of the Congress, because of the immense opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. As my colleagues will notice, our trade policy in this country simply is not working. If you look at what has happened to our trade deficit, that is the amount of exports that we sell to other countries versus the amount of imports we buy from other nations, you can see we had a negative flow in 1992, the year that I happened to run for Congress, of $38 billion. That was the year before NAFTA. NAFTA was passed in 1993. Then Congress passed a trade agreement with Chile, several other trade agreements. And you can see what has happened with this wrong-headed trade policy. This trade deficit, our trade deficit with the rest of the world was $38 billion in 1992. Last year, 2004, our trade deficit was $620 billion, $618 billion, precisely, from $38 billion to $618 billion. By any stretch of the imagination, it is hard to argue that our trade policy is working. And that is why the opposition has been bipartisan to CAFTA, to the Central American Free Labor, the Central American Free Trade Agreement. That is why the opposition has been bipartisan. That is why the opposition has been overwhelming. Last month 2 dozen Democrats and Republicans in Congress joined more than 150 business groups and labor organizations, sending the message, vote no on this Central American Free Trade Agreement. Last week more than 400 union workers and Members of Congress gathered in front of the U.S. Capitol again delivering that message, vote no on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Now, those of us opposed to CAFTA, which clearly is a majority in this Congress, or we already would have voted on it. Those of us opposed to CAFTA say we are not opposed to trade. We want to see fair trade agreements instead of free trade agreements, because we know what free trade agreements do. We know what this trade deficit does to our country. It means, according to the first President Bush, according to his economists, it means literally 12,000 lost jobs per $1 billion of trade deficit. That means a million lost jobs. It means more than that. A million lost manufacturing jobs in this country. In my State alone we have lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs, not entirely because of trade agreements, but that is a big component of it. So we know what these trade agreements do to individuals when they lose their jobs, what it does to family members when they lose their jobs, what it does to communities when a community has a plant closing, what it does to the school districts and the schools as they lose funding because these workers have lost their jobs and because this plant has closed, what it does to our country as a whole when we have this kind of trade deficit. We understand that. That is why those of us opposed to the Central American Free Trade Agreement want to throw out this dysfunctional cousin of NAFTA and want to negotiate a trade agreement that will lift workers up in Central America, while promoting prosperity here at home. There is no reason that our trade agreements need to look like this, need to have a result like this. Instead, Congress can move forward in passing a fair trade agreement. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the Majority Leader, the most powerful Republican in the U.S. Congress, and the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) both promised to vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement by the end of May. Now, if you will look at this chart you will see that the end of May happens to be the 1-year anniversary of when CAFTA was sent to Congress. So, Mr. Speaker, we should vote no on the Central American Free Trade Agreement; bury this trade agreement, and pass a trade agreement that is good for American workers and American communities.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, nearly a year ago, President Bush signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a one-sided plan to benefit multinational corporations at the expense of the United States and Central American workers, small farmers, and small business people. Every trade agreement negotiated by this administration has been ratified by Congress within 60 days of its signing. But CAFTA has languished in Congress for nearly 1 year. Why? Because this wrong-headed trade agreement offends both Republicans and Democrats. Just look at what has happened with our trade policy. In 1992, the year I first ran for Congress, was elected later that year, that year our trade deficit, meaning the amount of dollars we imported versus exported, our trade deficit was $38 billion in 1992. Last year in 2004, it was $618 billion. It is hard to argue our trade policy is working when the deficit goes from $38 billion to $618 billion in just 12 years. Opponents to the Central American Free Trade Agreement know it is an extension of NAFTA, which clearly did not work for our country. It is the same old story. Every time there is a trade agreement, the President says it will mean more jobs for Americans, more manufacturing done in the United States, it will mean more economic prosperity and profits for U.S. companies. It will mean a rising standard of living in the developing world; it will mean more involvement, a higher standard of living in the developing world, and more workers working. But it never works that way. So now they are trying this year because our trade policy clearly is not working, those promises every year, every trade agreement, never pan out. This year the administration is tying the Central American Free Trade Agreement, saying it is not just going to ensure growth, it is going to help democracy in the developing world. Both Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have said CAFTA will help in the war on terror, but 10 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement has done nothing to improve border security between Mexico and the United States, so that argument simply does not sell. So they tried something else. Last week the U.S. Chamber of Commerce flew six Central American presidents around our country hoping they might be able to sell CAFTA. They went to Albuquerque, they went to Los Angeles, they went to Cincinnati, Ohio, in my State, trying to convince the media, trying to convince the public, trying to convince Members of Congress that CAFTA was a good idea. Again they failed. The Costa Rican president after the trip announced his country would not ratify CAFTA unless an independent commission could determine the agreement will not hurt the working poor in his country. The most powerful Republican in the House, Majority Leader Tom DeLay, even promised a vote on CAFTA by Memorial Day to try to drum up support in Congress. As you can see by this calendar, we are barely a week away from that deadline, the deadline to vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement, set by Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the most powerful Republican in this Chamber. Echoed by the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Bill Thomas, they said there would be a vote by the end of this month. That is the 1-year anniversary of CAFTA. Remember, every other trade agreement was voted on within 2 months. This one has been a year. As you can see by the calendar, it has simply not happened. That is again because of the failures of NAFTA. Last month, two dozen Democrats and Republicans in Congress joined more than 150 business groups and labor organizations saying vote ``no'' on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Last week, more than 400 union workers and Members of Congress gathered in front of the U.S. Capitol delivered the same message, vote ``no'' on the Central American Free Trade Agreement, because Republicans and Democrats, labor and business, know what the administration refuses to admit, that CAFTA is about one thing. It is not about more manufacturing in the United States. It is not about creating jobs in the United States. It is one thing only. It is access to cheap Central American labor. That is why CAFTA, like NAFTA, is not a trade agreement, it is an outsourcing agreement. It will move more American jobs offshore. It will mean more profits for large businesses and more hurt for small businesses, more hurt for small farmers. Congress must throw out this dysfunctional cousin of NAFTA and negotiate a trade agreement that will lift up workers in Central America. When students such as those I met with today at Longfellow Elementary School in Lorain, Ohio, are guaranteed good-paying jobs when they graduate from high school, then we will know finally our trade policy is working.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed hearing my friend, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), and his comments about Medicare. I know that my Republican friends care about health care. But unfortunately, they care more about the drug companies and the insurance companies than they do in providing low-cost prescription drugs and health insurance to the 50 million Americans who do not have health insurance. I did not come forward today to talk about Medicare, particularly, except to note that when Congress passed the Medicare bill last year, a bill that a couple of years ago was not received by the public very well in part because they did not tell us the truth about the cost of the bill, it ended up costing almost $1 trillion when they told Congress it would only cost $400 billion. But more than that, this bill provided literally 180 additional billion dollars to the drug industry profits and had direct subsidies of about $60 billion to the insurance industry. So I wish, while my Republican friends, I do believe they care about the poor, they care about working people, they care about health insurance, unfortunately their caring so much more about the drug industry, the insurance industry, it sort of gets in the way of too often doing the right thing. I come forward this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, to talk a little bit about the Central American Free Trade Agreement which, frankly, will likely be defeated in this Congress bipartisanly. This is not a partisan issue. It is an issue of justice, an issue of jobs, and an issue of where our country and our economy goes. Two weeks ago, more than 150 Republicans and Democrats, Senate and House Members, pro-business, pro-labor groups gathered on Capitol Hill to speak out against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Republican House and Senate Members and Democratic House and Senate Members joined with these outside groups, this group of unlikely bed fellows perhaps, to speak with one voice of the unified message to vote against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. CAFTA expands on the failed trade policies of the North American Free Trade Agreement and expands on those policies by enlarging NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, to six Central American countries, including the Dominican Republic. When I ran for Congress in 1992, I do not want to bore my colleagues with numbers, when I ran for Congress in 1992, the United States had a trade deficit of $38 billion. We thought that was way too big. That meant we were buying, importing $38 billion more worth of goods than we were exporting; $38 billion trade deficit we had in 1992. Last year after NAFTA, after PNTR with China, after several other trade agreements over the last decade-plus, our trade deficit is $618 billion, from 38 to 618 billion. Now, you can see the trade deficit with Mexico as an example, prior to NAFTA, the year I came to Congress, in 1992, we actually had a trade surplus with the Republic of Mexico. We actually sold them more than we bought from them. Look what happened after NAFTA. Look at these numbers. This is zero right here. We had a trade surplus in those 4 years prior to NAFTA. Then all of the sudden 10 billion, almost 20 billion, 25 billion, over 30 billion, almost 40, over 40, approaching a $50 billion trade deficit with Mexico. Now, George Bush, Sr., who originally negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, he said that $1 billion in imports or exports represented about 12,000 jobs. That meant if you have a $3 billion trade surplus then that is three times 12,000. You would have 36,000 more jobs in your country. If you have a $3 billion trade deficit, you would have 36,000 fewer jobs in your country. Look at this. We went from a $38 billion trade deficit overall to $618 billion. You do not need to do the math except you just sort of estimate and you see what these trade agreements have meant to the American people, to our economy, to our manufacturing base. In my State of Ohio we have lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs. One out of 5 manufacturing jobs in my State has disappeared in the last 4\1/2\ years since President Bush took office. Those manufacturing jobs have been lost for a lot of reasons. The most important reason is NAFTA and PNTR and these trade agreements. Unfortunately, these trade pacts like NAFTA and like CAFTA enable companies to exploit cheap labor in other countries and then import back to the United States under favorable terms. The Central American Free Trade Agreement should probably be named the Central American Free Labor Agreement because that is really what it is all about. About 5 or 6 years after NAFTA passed, in the mid-to late 1990s, at my own expense I flew to McAllen, Texas, rented a car and went across the border to Reynosa, Mexico because I wanted to see what NAFTA looked like, what these free trade agreements looked like. I wanted to put a face on these numbers. These numbers are persuasive. They certainly convinced me and I think convinced many that these trade agreements are bad ideas. But I wanted to see real faces and real people and put real names next to those faces and people so I really could understand what this global economy looked like. I went to the home of two people who worked for General Electric Mexico. They lived in an area about 30 feet by 30 feet, maybe smaller than that, probably more like 20 feet by 20 feet. No running water. No electricity. Dirt floor. When it rained hard, their floor turned to mud. Both of these people worked at General Electric Mexico. They lived 3 miles from the United States of America. Now, if you walk outside their little shack into their colonia, their neighborhood, 3 miles from the United States, you will notice as you look around a couple of things. The first thing you will notice is there is a ditch nearby with who-knows-what human and industrial waste running through this ditch, maybe 4 feet wide. Children playing in this ditch because children will play wherever children play. The American Medical Association said this area along the Mexican- U.S. border was the most toxic area in the Western Hemisphere. So no telling what kinds of diseases these children could get from playing in this ditch. If you walk through the neighborhood more, you will notice that all of these shacks were built out of packing materials, boxes and wooden crates and wooden platforms, coming from the companies from where they worked. So you could tell where these workers worked just by walking through the neighborhoods and looking at the shacks, shacks literally constructed out of packing materials for these companies they worked for. The point of the story is when I went to a General Motors plant nearby and what I noticed was this General Motors plant looked just like a General Motors plant in Lawrencetown, Ohio, and just like a Ford plant in Avon Lake, Ohio, or just like a Chrysler plant in Twinsburg, Ohio. It was modern. It was new, newer than the plants in my State. The floors were clean. The workers were working hard. The latest technology. There was one difference between the General Motors plant in Mexico and the auto plant in Ohio. And the different was the auto plant in Mexico did not have a parking lot because the workers were not paid enough to buy the cars which they make. You can go half way around the world to Malaysia to a Motorola plant. The workers do not make enough to buy the cells phones which they manufacture. You can go back halfway around the world to Costa Rica, one of the countries in the Central American Free Labor Agreement, and the workers at a Disney plant do not make enough to buy the toys that they manufacture. You can go back halfway around the world to China and go to a Nike plant and the workers do not make enough to buy the shoes that they manufacture. That is what is great about our country. In our country because of labor unions, because of labor laws, because of our democracy workers share in the wealth that they are creating. If you work at General Motors or you work at a hardware store or wherever you work, if you help your employer make a profit and create wealth at that company or create value as a nurse at a hospital or a teacher in a high school, you share in the wealth or share in the good that you do. You get a share of those profits, a share of that wealth. That is how our country works. Unfortunately, it does not work that way in Mexico. And as you will see, frankly, it does not work that way in the other countries that are part of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The average worker in the United States makes $38,000. That is enough to buy shoes, maybe to send your kids to college. It is enough to live in a decent place. It is enough to own a car. It is enough to go to the grocery store. It is enough to buy some things. But if you look at the rest of the countries in the Central American Free Trade Agreement, Costa Rica, the average income is $9,100. In the Dominican Republic it is $6,000; El Salvador, $4,800; Guatemala, $4,100; and in Honduras and Nicaragua it is less than 10 percent of the income that Americans make: $2,600 in Honduras; $2,300 in Nicaragua. The combined purchasing power of these six countries, the combined purchasing power of the Central American countries is equal to that of Columbus, Ohio, or Orlando, Florida. When you think about the combined purchasing power and you look what these people in those countries earn, you know they do not make enough to buy a car manufactured in Ohio. They do not make enough to buy prime rib coming from cattle in Nebraska or Colorado. They do not make enough to buy software from the State of Washington. They do not make enough to buy steel from West Virginia. They do not make enough to buy clothes from North Carolina or South Carolina or Georgia. The fact is this Central American Free Labor Agreement is not about U.S. companies and U.S. farmers exporting their products to Central America. That will not happen because the Central American people are not paid enough to buy American products. What this agreement is all about is simply outsourcing of jobs; is American manufacturers moving production to Central America and setting up plants and paying workers wages that barely keep them alive and then selling those products back to the United States at tremendous profits. I have visited a factory in Nicaragua where the workers are making 23 cents per pair of jeans that they sew. They get 23 cents for a pair of jeans they sew, and that pair of jeans is sold at Wal-Mart in the United States for $25 or $30. So the company is getting rich. The workers stay poor. And unfortunately, that is what is going to happen and get worse if CAFTA passes. If you want more proof already than this, the trade deficit, the amount of money that people are making, the fact that they simply cannot buy American products, let us look at the politics of it for a moment. The President of the United States has sent five trade agreements to Congress. The first four trade agreements, the trade agreement with Morocco, one with Chile, one with Singapore, and one with Australia, all passed the Congress overwhelmingly in fewer than 60 days, in less than 2 months. This time the President sent this trade agreement to us is almost a year ago, 348 days ago to be exact. Now, the reason the President sent this a year ago and Congress has not moved on it is simply because the American people understand what these trade agreements do to our country. Not just what they do to a family that loses a job. But what that means to that family, what that means to that school district, what that means to police and fire protection is that they do not have the kind of tax revenues when a plant closes down in a community and moves to China or moves out of town. All of that the American people understand it. It is finally after all of these trade agreements, the Congress of the United States has finally figured it out. That is why we have not voted on the Central American Free Labor Agreement yet, simply because the American people understand this trade agreement is not working. It has not worked in the past. These trade agreements will not work in the future. The President has tried to get it to pass in Congress, and Congress simply does not have the votes to pass it. Earlier this spring, the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the most powerful Republican in the Congress, has announced that we would vote on Central American Free Trade Agreement by the end of the month, by May 27 before Congress leaves for Memorial Day weekend. That will mark literally the 1 year deadline, the 1 year anniversary, since CAFTA was signed by the President. That means with CAFTA, if CAFTA's not voted on by then, it is dead in the water. The issue is dead on arrival. It is clear the American people have said no and the U.S. Congress has said no. Once this 1-year anniversary passes, a lot of us who are opposed to this agreement say the President, I think the 1 year really means, okay, it has failed, it is time to go back to the drawing board and write a Central American Free Trade Agreement that we can pass. Clearly, there is a desperation among those people who have pushed Central American Free Trade Agreement in this Congress, that they have not been able to convince the American people that it is a good idea. So they are trying one last-ditch effort and that happened this week. This week the Presidents of the Central American countries and the Dominican Republic and six countries under CAFTA are touring the United States. The six Presidents of these countries are on a United States Chamber of Commerce junket pushing CAFTA. They went to Miami, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, to my State to Cincinnati, and they are attempting to convince the American people and the press that CAFTA is good for their country, good for their people and good for our country and good for our people. Like our own President, like in this country, these six Presidents have tried to convince everybody that CAFTA will lift up low income workers and that CAFTA will create jobs here in the United States. What they do not say is they do not talk about the combined purchasing power of CAFTA Nations equal to that of Columbus, Ohio, or Orlando, Florida, or Memphis, Tennessee. They do not mention that. They do not mention the fact, as I said earlier, that the workers in Central America cannot buy cars in Ohio or software from Washington State or steel made in Pennsylvania. What we do not hear from them is that CAFTA does nothing to ensure the enforcement of internationally recognized labor standards in their countries, and with all due respect to the Central American leaders, what they are not saying and what millions of us know already is that millions of their workers, like 10s of millions of American workers, do not support this agreement. The Presidents may support them, but the workers in their countries and our country do not support this agreement. What they will not tell reporters, what they did not tell reporters in their Chamber of Commerce junket around the United States is that 8,000 Guatemalan workers protested against CAFTA 2 months ago. Two of them were killed by government security forces. They do not tell us that 10s of thousands of El Salvadorans protested CAFTA two-and-a-half year ago. They do not tell us about the 18,000 letters sent by Honduran workers to the Honduran legislature, decrying the dysfunctional cousin of CAFTA, NAFTA. They do not tell us about the 10,000 people who protested CAFTA in Managua, Nicaragua, in 2003. They do not tell us about the 30,000 CAFTA protesters in Costa Rica this past fall. They do not tell us that hundreds of thousands of workers have protested in Central America in 45 different demonstrations in the last 3 years. Opposition to CAFTA is as strong in Central America as it is in the United States. I ask my colleagues in this Congress, when the Presidents of Central American countries come around to our offices, as they have, and ask us to vote for the Central American Free Trade Agreement, understand, they may support it for whatever reasons, but the people of their countries, in large numbers, do not. A couple of nights ago, after the Chamber of Commerce tour of America that the six Presidents took, the Chamber of Commerce hosted a reception for the visiting dignitaries, rewarding them, thanking them for their lobbying efforts this week. You can imagine this very plush room at the Chamber of Commerce, in its beautiful structure in downtown Washington, where the chamber has its very nice offices. You can imagine the leaders, the CEOs, of the most powerful and largest corporations in our country were raising toasts, thanking the six Central American and Dominican Republic Presidents for their campaigning for this issue. Then you can see the six Presidents raising a toast to the Presidents and CEOs of the largest companies in America, thanking them for their support. It just made you wonder were the CEOs or were these Presidents thinking of the millions of workers and hundreds of thousands of workers in each of these countries, millions of workers in the United States, who are opposed to this agreement and who knew that this agreement would bring more problems for America. Did they think about the small businesses in Ohio and Michigan that do not want another failed trade agreement? Did they think about the small stores in Managua and Santo Domingo and in San Juan that would go out of business and that would be pushed out of business because of these trade agreements? Did they think about the family farms in North Carolina or the coffee farmers in Costa Rica or the highlands of Nicaragua? Did they think about the sugar farmers in Minnesota, in eastern Oregon and in Idaho and in Minnesota and Louisiana? Or did they think about the sugar cane workers in Central American? My guess is they did not. When I think about these trade issues, and I again go back to this chart as I am about to close, I go back to this chart which shows the relative income of each of these Central American countries, and when you think about where we want to go with our trade agreements and what has happened to our trade agreements, we have seen so much pain on each side. We have seen pain in O'Leary, Ohio, near where I live, a town of about 50,000, industrial town which has had certainly its tough times. When York Manufacturing shut down its plant and moved much of its production to Mexico, think about those families; the unemployment in that community; people losing their jobs; kids not able to go to college; people, their homes are foreclosed on; what happened to the school district, which lost a big chunk of money; what happened to police and fire protection in that city because they lost so much tax revenue. Then you think about what happens to workers in the developing world in these countries when these trade agreements inflict the damage that they do on them, these workers, the family I met in Mexico that worked at General Electric, that could barely make a living and what happened in their lives and the pain they felt. You think about the damage, both in the rich world, our world, the United States, the rich countries, and you think of the poor countries and the damage there. Instead, we could pass not this Central American Free Trade Agreement. When the time runs out, when this clock is down, when the deadline passes and CAFTA is dead, it is time to pass a new Central American Free Trade Agreement, negotiate a new one that will really lift workers up, because trade agreements work when the world's poorest workers, the workers for Nike in China, the workers for Motorola in Malaysia, the workers for Disney in Costa Rica, the workers at the auto plants in Mexico, when the world's poorest workers can buy American products, rather than just make them, then we will know, Mr. Speaker, that our trade policies are finally succeeding.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan), for his good work and his interest, both in protecting American jobs and his interest in fair play in Central America so workers there have their living standards raised rather than continue to stagnate, which is what these trade agreements have done. We are also joined by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland). I yield next to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) who, as I said, has been working on trade issues for her entire 23 years in this Congress.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio. Think about what he just said. This agreement has made it even harder for the poorest people in this hemisphere; again, look at the income here. The United States average income, $38,000. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) mentioned Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras especially; their income is less than 10 percent of ours, literally, and they are forcing, because U.S. drug companies have convinced the United States Trade Representative's Office, appointed by the Bush administration, convinced them to squeeze the poorest people in the world even harder on paying for prescription drugs. I mean, it is just, when we talk about values, when we talk about morality, to do that to the poorest of the poor that need HIV drugs, that need malaria drugs, that need tuberculosis drugs, that need antibiotics, and they are going to end up paying more money because, in fact, the United States Trade Representative said to the government of one country, If you do not change your laws, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) talked about this and has talked about it before, if you do not change your laws, we are not going to allow you into the Central America Free Trade Agreement. It is not like the drug industry does not have way too much power with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and with Republican leadership and in the White House here in this country, where people are paying two and three and four times what they ought to be paying for prescription drugs; now we are seeing that drug industry exert its power, helped by the U.S. Government, in the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I stand today to announce and commend the 2005 winners of the Pulitzer Prize and take particular notice that four of this year's winners are graduates of Ohio's public State universities. Walter Bogdanich, with the New York Times, won the Pulitzer for National Reporting, getting a master's degree in journalism from Ohio State. Julia Keller, with the Chicago Tribune, won the Pulitzer for Feature Writing after earning a doctoral degree in English from Ohio State. Nick Anderson, with the Louisville Courier-Journal, won the Pulitzer for Editorial Cartooning after graduating from Ohio State with a degree in political science. And of course I am most proud of my wife, Connie Schultz, of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland who won the Pulitzer for Commentary. She graduated from Kent State with a degree in journalism and was editor of the Daily Kent Stater. The Pulitzer defines excellence in journalism, and it is personally gratifying to me that Ohio's public universities helped these talented individuals achieve this extraordinary honor.