Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, President Bush came to Cleveland near my district last week to try to defend his economic policies. This is a President who will be the first President since Herbert Hoover who has seen a net loss of jobs during his term. Ohio has lost 3 million jobs since George Bush raised his right hand on January 20, 2001. He has lost 2,000 jobs a week, 260 jobs every single day that he has been President. His response always to bad economic news is more tax cuts for the most privileged, trickle-down economics, hoping something will trickle down to the middle class and more trade agreements like NAFTA that ship jobs overseas. Tax cuts for the wealthy are not working. Overseas trade agreements like China and PNTR and CAFTA and NAFTA and all the things that he is trying to do, those are not working, either. We need an economic policy that puts working families first. That means job creation. That means those 300,000 Ohioans who have lost jobs can be put back to work.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the Republican Medicare bill is so good, why do they have to sell it so hard? That is a question I have been asking myself lately. I bet it is a question the American people are starting to ask too. When AARP boss Bill Novelli came out for the Bush Medicare privatization bill last year, he launched a $7 million ad campaign to convince seniors he had made the right decision. America's seniors knew better, and 45,000 AARP members quit in protest. Rather than learn from AARP's mistake, the President is repeating that same mission, this time at taxpayers' expense. The Bush administration is spending almost $14 million on a nationwide taxpayer- financed TV advertising campaign, the goal of which is to ``educate'' seniors on why the new Medicare drug law is not as bad as it appears. Interestingly in this election year, he is running those ads at taxpayers' expense even though the Medicare bill does not take effect for 2 more years. The Bush administration's Medicare ads were suspect from the start. With the slick look of a campaign spot, they assure seniors that the bill guarantees the same Medicare, the same benefits. It is not the same Medicare. They would not be spending the money and trying so hard to convince us if it were the same Medicare. It is not the same Medicare. All seniors will pay higher deductibles. Millions of seniors will pay higher premiums. And in terms of more benefits, the new coverage is not even available until 2006. It is far from free, and it is actually less generous than the employer-sponsored retiree coverage many seniors have today. In fact, by jeopardizing these employer-sponsored benefits that some 12 million seniors have today, the new Medicare law is likely to leave millions of those seniors with less coverage than they have today. ``The same Medicare, more benefits.'' It is a catchy soundbite. The Government Accounting Office, the nonpartisan Government Accounting Office, also said it is false advertising. In the people's name with their tax dollars. They said it was false advertising. Now newspapers tell us that the Bush administration is not just manipulating the news; they are inventing it. The administration is using the people's tax dollars literally to hire actors to portray reporters in staged ``interviews'' that look more like the Home Shopping Network than they do legitimate news, and they do a public discourse. Even the conservative editors at The Plain Dealer, the largest paper in my State in Cleveland, called those ads phony. And that is just the beginning. News reports, real news stories written by real reporters say the $13 million ad campaign, the infomercial-like interviews are just the tip of the iceberg. The administration is reportedly planning to spend another 80 million of the people's tax dollars to push the Medicare bill which is now law. The drug companies, close allies of President Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress, the word on the street is that the drug companies are going to contribute $100 million to President Bush's reelection. No surprise that the drug companies came into this institution and wrote that language and wrote that Medicare law, the parts that the insurance industry did not write in the Medicare law. Those drug companies are also partners in the marketing plan. Drug giant Pfizer recently launched a traveling road show to talk up the law's new coverage. A less credible champion for drug affordability would be hard to find, Mr. Speaker, less credible than Pfizer. After all, it is the same company, Pfizer, that cut off supplies to Canadian pharmacies when my constituents are trying to buy drugs in Canada because they are so much less expensive. The same drug, same packaging, same dosage, just much less expensive. By the way, Pfizer's pitchman is former U.S. Republican Senator Bob Dole, the same Bob Dole who voted against Medicare in 1965, its creation, who was still bragging about his ``no'' vote 30 years later. There is even more to this story. Last year Medicare's chief actuary, a government employee, the man responsible for actually drawing an honest fiscal picture to tell the Congress and to tell the American people, said the Bush plan would cost well over $500 billion rather than the President's promise and Republican leadership's promise that it costs $400 billion. After the bill was enacted, the administration released a revised estimate, surprise, and said actually it will cost about $530 billion. The Medicare actuary, a Federal employee, was forbidden by his boss, a Federal employee, a Bush political appointee, who is now, interestingly enough, a drug industry lobbyist, that Medicare actuary was prevented from releasing the plan's true cost under the threat that he would be fired if he talked to the American people about the real cost, if he talked to Congress about the real cost. When he was threatened, he was threatened with the loss of his job by a Bush political appointee who is now a drug company lobbyist. These actions, Mr. Speaker, by the Bush administration and its drug company allies raise serious questions of judgment and serious questions of conduct by those elected officials and appointed officials, by the President, by the head of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, now a drug company lobbyist. I hope these questions will receive careful scrutiny. And still they raise the basic question: If the Republican Medicare bill is so good, why do they have to sell it so hard using 80 million taxpayer dollars?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, yesterday President Bush made a campaign trip to Cleveland to speak to small business people to explain his economic policy and to try to answer why Ohio has lost 300,000 jobs in the last 3 years; to try to explain why Ohio has lost 160,000 manufacturing jobs; that one out of every six manufacturing jobs in Ohio has disappeared, likely permanently for most of them. One out of six jobs in manufacturing has disappeared since President Bush took office. He also came to Ohio to answer why the head of his council, the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, Gregory Mankiw, said that outsourcing of jobs, jobs moving overseas, that Mr. Mankiw said and the President signed a report supporting this, that outsourcing was a good thing because it makes the economy more efficient. Now, Mr. Speaker, I think the President needs to explain a little better. Last week, I was in Akron, in my district. Akron, Ohio. I spoke to some company owners who own small machine shops with 50 employees, 30 employees, or 100 employees, but all small manufacturing businesses. One owner of a machine shop came up to me before I spoke. He gave me a stack of these fliers. He actually gave me about four times this many, about six or seven inches of fliers. He told me that he gets about this many fliers every month, and he says these fliers are auction fliers. They basically are notifications from companies all over the United States that are having fire sales; that are having going-out-of- business sales. Mr. Speaker, here is an auction flyer that says high-tech manufacturing plant closing in Elk Grove, Indiana. Another one is a plant closed, everything sells, from Verona, Pennsylvania. Here are two complete stamping and machine tool shops closing. They are selling all their equipment. They are looking for buyers. This is from Oak Brook, Illinois. Here is a plant closing, everything must sell, from North Carolina. Another one here from Marion, Ohio, complete shop close-out auction. The absolute auction, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, in my district, complete liquidation of the Cuyahoga Falls plant. Precision C&C job shop downsizing because of outsourcing, from Scottsboro, Alabama. Another one from Massachusetts, large-capacity fabricating and machine shop closing. Another one, 3 days, two tremendous public auctions, two companies, machinery and equipment and real estate. Plant closed, everything must go, real estate for sale. Another company, plant closed, everything sells. Another one from Ross, Ohio, plant closing due to relocation overseas. Another one from Medina, Ohio, facility closed, all must go. Mr. Speaker, I do not think the President understands the depths of this problem in this country. These are companies, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of companies representing hundreds of thousands of workers who are going out of business, who are downsizing, who are shipping their jobs overseas; yet the President says that he supports outsourcing, that outsourcing is a good thing. The President needs to look in the eye of some of those 800,000 workers in this country who have seen their unemployment compensation expire in the last 3 months, and this Republican Congress refuses to extend those benefits. It is not just 800,000 workers. It is 800,000 families; it is millions of children; it is communities; it is our schools. Everyone is affected by the plant closings. The President's answer, if there is bad economic news, and if he looked at some of these plant closings, fire sales, going out of business auction brochures, he would say we need to do more tax cuts for the wealthy, maybe some of it will trickle down and create jobs; we need to do more trade agreements like NAFTA. That is the President's answer to every bad piece of economic news. When the President sees unemployment goes up, he says more tax cuts for the most privileged and more trade agreements that hemorrhage jobs overseas. When the President sees bad economic numbers, terrible trade deficits, the highest in history, our trade deficit with China alone is now $124 billion, and that is where a lot of these companies are going, the President's answer is we need more trade agreements like NAFTA and tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country. Mr. Speaker, we need to pass Crane-Rangel, which will give incentives for domestic manufacturers and small businesses. We need to extend unemployment compensation to those 800,000 families.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the President flew Air Force 1 to Cleveland today to campaign in my home State of Ohio, talking with 700 or 800 female small business owners. While the President came and talked about small business and job creation and all that he wants to do in a State which has suffered the worst or second worse job loss in the country, the President, at the same time, and this Congress today, this House today considered this legislation, is slashing $94 million from a loan program essential to small business development. He has shrunk the size of the Small Business Administration. This President basically treats small business one way, with very little assistance, and large businesses, like the Halliburton Corporation, which still pays Vice President Cheney $3,000 a month from their payroll, the Halliburton Corporation, very differently. The President really does not get it when he comes to a State like Ohio, a State where we have lost 166,000 manufacturing jobs since he took office, 300,000 jobs overall since he took office; one out of six manufacturing jobs in the State of Ohio has simply disappeared in the last 3 years. The President's solution to all of this is continued tax cuts for the most privileged people, with the hope that some of that money will trickle down and create jobs. The other solution the President has is more trade agreements, NAFTA- like trade agreements, that ship jobs overseas; that hemorrhage jobs to Mexico, to China, and all over the world. He continues, as he campaigned in Cleveland today to those small business owners, he continued to say more tax cuts for the most privileged and more trade agreements. And, clearly, for 3 years that has not worked. One-sixth of our manufacturing base is gone in Ohio and about one seventh of the manufacturing base around the country. That was really brought home to me last week. I was in Akron, Ohio, speaking to a group of owners of machine shops, about 60 people. And a gentleman came forward and he dropped a stack of brochures, leaflets like this. He dropped about four times this many, and he said this is what I get in about a month in the mail from companies around the country. And these stacks of brochures, these stacks of leaflets are auction notices for companies going out of business. Every one of these represents a company that is going out of business or is downsizing as a result of the Bush recession. Here is one plant. Closed, everything sells. Here is another one from Mansfield, Ohio. Two complete stamping and machine tool shops. They are closing and selling. From North Carolina, public auction. Plant closing. Everything must sell. From Marion, Ohio, complete shop close-out auction. From Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, in my district, absolute auction. Everything is going. From Scottsboro, Alabama, precision job shop downsizing. Another one here for a CNC machining tool room and production machinery. Excess equipment due to corporate outsourcing. Excess equipment due to corporate outsourcing. President Bush's top economic adviser the other day said outsourcing is a good thing when these plants move overseas and they ship jobs overseas, because it makes our businesses more efficient. Tell that to the 50 or 60 workers that worked at this plant when the owners of this plant say excess equipment, we are selling due to corporate outsourcing. From Massachusetts, a large-capacity fabricating and machine shop closing. Another one from Chicago. Six CNC lathes, 12 chuckers, 22 bar machines sold. Surplus to the continuing operations. They have lost businesses and they are selling most of their equipment. Here is another one. Three days, two tremendous public auctions. Machinery, equipment, and real estate. Plant's closed, everything must go. Real estate for sale. Here is another one that says Dominion Castings Foundry, equipment machine facility. Plant closed, everything sells. Another one from Baltimore, Maryland. Complete facility selling. Another, 5-day public auction. Plant closing due to relocation. Another one, on and on and on. This company is closing for the same reasons. Now, Mr. Speaker, it is bad enough that these places are closing and the President's response is more tax cuts. That is not working. More trade agreements hemorrhaging jobs overseas. That is not working. That is bad enough, but there are 800,000 Americans whose unemployment compensation has expired in the last 3 months. That is 800,000 workers, 800,000 families living in communities around this country; and the President and this Congress, the Republican leadership in this Congress, will not extend their unemployment compensation. That is morally wrong. It is bad for our country, it is bad for our communities, it is bad for our families, and it is bad for our workers.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support this legislation, which will help ensure that FDA's medical device user fee and third-party review programs operate as intended. The goal of those programs is to promote timely access to medical devices without compromising FDA's ability to evaluate properly the safety and effectiveness of those devices. Successful bipartisan negotiations produced the authorizing legislation for these programs, and it is the same with this follow-up measure. I commend the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood) for their work on this successful committee effort. Unfortunately, the need for noncontroversial technical corrections is not the only obstacle preventing the medical device user program from fulfilling its potential. It is important for colleagues on both sides of the aisle to be aware that continuation of the user fee program, and it is this program that enables patients to receive cutting edge medical devices on a timely basis, the continuation of the user fee program hinges on the appropriations process. User fees do no incremental good if they supplant rather than supplement Federal spending. As in the successful prescription drug user fee program, the continuation of user fees depends on sufficient annual appropriations. Last year's appropriation for medical device reviews was insufficient to sustain the medical device user fee program. If this year's appropriation does not address this shortfall, the user fee program could very well fold. Hard work went into establishing that program. The existence of that program enables patients more timely access to medical devices at no additional cost to American taxpayers. We need to make sure the program does not fold. Mr. Speaker, as this House continues its rush to give more tax cuts to the most affluent people in the country, therefore making a choice to underfund too often health and education, it is important that we focus on this very important, essential program.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), just talked about the new economic statistics, that some 21,000 jobs were created last month in this country. The President had predicted 250,000 jobs. The Wall Street Journal had predicted 150,000, something like that; 21,000 were actually created. Of those 21,000, actually every one of those jobs was a government job, many of them in education, productive, important jobs; but actually there was no private sector job creation, period. There was actually a loss of private sector jobs. This is where it really matters to people. There were 760,000 American workers whose unemployment benefits have expired in December, January, and February. That is 760,000 workers whose unemployment has expired who cannot find jobs. That is 760,000 families, many of whom have children, who have lost their unemployment compensation, have no income, cannot find jobs. My friend on the other side of the aisle, the President and the Republican leadership, even though a lot of Republicans want to support it but the President and the Republican leadership will not bring it up, have said no to extending unemployment compensation for those 760,000 workers, those 760,000 families. Last week, I visited a group of about 50 or 60 machine-shop operators in Akron in my district, in the city of Akron, Ohio. Right before I spoke, a man walked forward and put just a plastic bag full of brochures like this in front of me, and what they are is a bag of about five times this size.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the President last week delivered the Central American Free Trade Agreement to this Congress as part of his economic plan to grow the economy. What we have seen from the President's economic plan, which consists of two basic solutions, are two things. One is tax cuts for the wealthiest people of our society, the 1 percent wealthiest, the people who need it least, hoping it will trickle down and create jobs. The other part of this program is to push through this Congress more NAFTAs, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, trade agreements which have no labor and environmental standards, trade agreements which hemorrhage jobs, which ship jobs overseas. We have seen that kind of economic policy, except we have seen it not work. We have seen in this administration a loss of almost 3 million jobs. In my State of Ohio, we have lost one out of every six manufacturing jobs. Hundreds of thousand of Ohioans have lost their jobs. We have seen no manufacturing jobs created. In fact, since President Bush took office, we have lost manufacturing jobs not just in Ohio but across the country every single month of the Bush administration. Now, just recently the President put out his economic report. This Economic Report of the President is put out every year. As my colleagues can see here, the President signed it on page 4, and this economic report makes a lot of promises. As one of his earlier economic reports had made, the President in 2002 promised an increase of 3.4 million jobs. We have actually seen a loss of 1.7 million jobs since then. In this report, he makes another promise of 2.6 million jobs created just this year alone. Already the President's people are backing off that promise. But you might be interested, and there are some things in this report that the President and his people, his Chief Economic Adviser, have sort of bragged about. One of the things that the President's Economic Adviser said when he said, ``When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to provide it domestically,'' and then the Chief Economic Adviser to the President said, That is a good thing. If it is made somewhere else cheaper, then good economics says we ought to ship those jobs overseas and make them more cheaply overseas and make them there and displace the jobs in the United States. That is not good economic policy. It is not good trade policy. It particularly is not good policy for our people. Yes, we want to do trade. Yes, we want that train to move out of the station advancing trade, but we want to do the trade, we want fair trade, not free trade. This administration, unfortunately, is committed to free trade. In the meantime, the President's Council on Economic Advisers has said in this report, also on page 103, In the long run, a large part of the burden of taxes is likely to be shifted to workers through a reduction in wages. In other words, the President's policy of tax cuts for the wealthy, hoping that it trickles down and provides something for everybody else, and these trade agreements with no labor and environmental standards, these trade agreements that ship jobs overseas, in the meantime, the President's people say what is going to happen is a large part of the burden of taxes is likely to be shifted to workers through a reduction in wages. That is why even people that have kept their jobs, as most people have during this Bush recession, even then those people's wages have been stagnant or in some cases have gone down. That is because the President's people say that we are going to see tax cuts for the wealthy, and we are going to see loss of wages for workers and for the middle class. The President's Chief Economic Adviser goes on to say, Analyses that fail to recognize this shift can be misleading, suggesting that higher income groups bear an unrealistically large share of the long run burden. In other words, when the President's people say, well, we have to give a tax cut to the richest people in our society because they are paying the most taxes, the President's own Economic Adviser said that is not the case. What is happening in our economy, you may applaud that, is these tax cuts shift the burden. As we cut taxes on the wealthy, it shifts the burden to the middle class in the form of lower wages, and we can also see that, Mr. Speaker, with what Alan Greenspan said last week. He came to this Congress and said I support continuing the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and then he said, but because of that, we have a budget shortfall and we have to cut Social Security. So the President of the United States and Alan Greenspan, his man at the Federal Reserve, are saying to the American people, you have either got the tax cuts for the most privileged and if you take those tax cuts, then it means we have to cut Social Security. That is really what we are going to talk about in the next 8 months, that if we are going to make these tax cuts, if we are going to continue these tax cuts for the wealthy that the President wants, it means fewer dollars for education, less money for prescription drugs and other health care, and ultimately it means cutting Social Security. That is the choice. That is what the election will be about this year. That is what this Congress is going to be about in the next 6 months. That is what we are going to hear John Kerry and George Bush debate. If we do the tax cuts and cut the taxes of the wealthiest Americans, it means less money for Social Security beneficiaries. It means less money for environmental enforcement. It means less money for the middle class. It means a stagnation of wages, and it takes this country in the wrong direction. It is bad economic policy. It is bad for our country. It is bad for our communities. It is bad for our schools. It is bad for the middle class.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago, President Bush sent to Congress this Central American Free Trade Agreement, an agreement that would expand NAFTA to six countries in Central America. He plans later to send to Congress an agreement called the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would expand NAFTA, except for Cuba, to all the rest of Latin America. These two agreements will double the size of the North American Free Trade Agreement in population, will quadruple the number of low-income workers in what is now the North American Free Trade Agreement, so that in the Free Trade Area of the Americas it would have that many countries, that many people, that many low-income workers. Now, you would think that the President of the United States would understand, with the economy the way it is, that this is not the right response. Ohio, my home State and that of the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who is here, also from Toledo, our State has lost 166,000 manufacturing jobs. One out of six Ohio manufacturing jobs is gone, likely will not return, mostly gone overseas. Companies have shut down, companies have out-sourced production, companies have moved their facilities overseas, south of the border, or elsewhere. Ohio literally has lost, in fact the country has lost manufacturing jobs every single month since George Bush took office. This country has lost some 3 million jobs since President Bush took office. And to every bit of bad economic news, every time the unemployment rate goes up, every time there is a report on lost jobs, every time there is bad economic news, the President has two answers: Tax cuts for the people who need them least. Tax cuts for the wealthiest people in our society. Half these tax cuts go to the richest 1 percent. Tax cuts for the wealthy, hoping they trickle down and provide a few jobs maybe, or give some economic prosperity to the country. That is one of his answers. The other answer is more trade agreements, like NAFTA, like MFN/PNTR for China, like the World Trade Organization, more trade agreements that ship jobs overseas; that hemorrhage jobs overseas. Now, in this economic report of the President, which came out last week, signed by President Bush, on page 4, issued by the President's Chief Economic Adviser Gregory Mankiw, also signed by him, he is the President's top economic adviser, it says that Mr. Mankiw predicted on behalf of the President that we would create 2.6 million jobs this year. Even the President's people, after that report came out, said, no, no, no, we cannot create that many, and they immediately disavowed parts of this report. But it is the same old thing. When the President first took office, he said, give me the tax breaks and we will create millions of jobs. He got the tax cuts, but no jobs were created. Jobs were lost. Then after September 11, clearly a tragedy for our country, clearly a blow to our economy, but after September 11, the President said, give me more tax cuts for the wealthiest, aimed at the most wealthy people, the most privileged, the ones who needs it least in society, and we will create 2.5 million jobs. Again he said that, and again we had job loss in this country. In this report now it says 2.6 million jobs will be created, but it is simply not happening. And again the President's response to every problem with our economy, as this economic report of the President says, more tax cuts for the wealthy and more trade agreements that hemorrhage jobs, that ship jobs overseas. Now, as we continue, the President wants to see us do more tax cuts this year. Those tax cuts will go again overwhelmingly to the most privileged people in society. But Alan Greenspan came to this Congress last week and he said because we do not have any money, we are going to have to cut Social Security. So not only do the President's tax cuts not create jobs in this country, not only do the President's tax cuts, who overwhelmingly go to the wealthiest people in society, not only do they not simulate the economy and create jobs, but they also mean that the President and his economic advisers are making a choice; it is either tax cuts or funding Social Security. They have made their choice. Alan Greenspan, the President's man at the Federal Reserve, has said we cannot afford to fully fund Social Security, and later he will talk the same about Medicare because we have this huge budget deficit. We have this huge budget deficit because of the these tax cuts going overwhelmingly to the wealthiest people. And Alan Greenspan and the President are saying we need this year to do additional tax cuts, again for the wealthiest people in society. You see how this adds up? Tax cuts for the wealthiest people in society, trade agreements that hemorrhage jobs and that ship jobs overseas. We do not have much in economic recovery and we have to cut Social Security. It simply does not add up. The President needs to redirect his efforts against these trade agreements. Stop the trade agreements. No more tax cuts. Let us concentrate on job creation, creating manufacturing jobs and restoring Social Security.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to succeed the gentleman from Virginia who has a strong commitment to human rights. His talk today underscored that commitment to human rights in our country and around the world. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to start with a couple of facts. Under the Bush tax plan, a millionaire in this country got a $93,000 tax cut, for someone on the average making $1 million in this country. Alan Greenspan, the President's guy on the Federal Reserve, yesterday said in order to pay for our budget deficits, we are going to have to cut Social Security and cut Medicare. Of course that is what he thinks, an investment banker, a Wall Street banker, someone who has enjoyed, and whose friends have enjoyed, these huge tax cuts and wants to continue enjoying these huge tax cuts, who does not much rely himself on Medicare or Social Security now or in the future. But, again, the fact a millionaire gets a $93,000 tax cut and because so many millionaires have gotten such huge tax cuts under the Bush plan over the last 3 years, Alan Greenspan is right, I suppose, if that is the way you think of this, that in order to pay for those millionaires' tax cuts, we are going to have to cut Social Security and Medicare. This Congress and this President have made a series of choices. They have chosen to give tax cuts to people in our society who need them the least, people making $1 million, $10 million, $20 million, $50 million, $100 million, people who are billionaires. We have made a choice. They have given tax cuts to that group of people, the people who need it the least, the most privileged in our society, the 1 percent wealthiest people in our country; and because they have gotten tax cuts, according to Alan Greenspan, Congress will need to cut Social Security, cut Medicare, cut spending on education, cut spending on environmental enforcement, cut spending on assisting local and State governments, cut Medicaid, all the things that happen as a result of that. This is all, Mr. Speaker, in the context of what this President and Alan Greenspan have done with our economy. We saw in the 1990s the creation of more than 20 million jobs, well, well, well over 100,000 jobs a month. In fact, close to 200,000 jobs a month were created during the 1990s. Since President Bush took office, we have seen the loss of 3 million jobs. In my State of Ohio, one out of six manufacturing jobs has simply disappeared, likely never to return. So the Bush answer to this, not much different from his father's answer to the kind of economy that caused him to be voted out of office, the President's answer to this is twofold. It is more tax cuts for the wealthiest people in our society and so-called trickle-down economics. Hoping that those tax cuts will encourage them to invest and maybe they will provide some jobs does not seem to be working. And the other part of his plan is more trade agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement; we have got one with Australia coming down; the Singapore, Chile, the Central American Free Trade Agreement coming up; the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which will double the size of NAFTA, quadruple the number of low-income workers, those trade agreements that hemorrhage jobs and ship jobs overseas. So when we see Alan Greenspan say we have got to keep giving tax cuts to millionaires but to pay for them we are going to have to cut Social Security and Medicare, that is the same thing that George Bush is saying when he continues this economic policy. Again, this economic policy is twofold. It is tax cuts for the most privileged people in our society, the people who need it the least; and trickle-down economics and trade agreements that hemorrhage jobs, that ship jobs overseas. It is simply not working. We have lost 3 million jobs. In fact, George Bush will likely, we do not know in the next 10 months for sure, but likely will be the first President since Herbert Hoover to actually have lost jobs during his time in office. That has not happened. The jobs he is losing are some of America's best jobs. They are manufacturing jobs. They are jobs that have sent kids to college, allowed people to buy a home, allowed people to have a middle-class life-style. If we continue this trickle-down economics and we continue these trade agreements that ship jobs overseas, we will continue this loss of jobs, and we will never see our economy come back the way it should and bring us the kind of country that we are used to having. That is why Alan Greenspan's comments really do hit home, that he wants to continue this tax policy, continue trickle-down economics. It just means the choice that he is making, the choice that President Bush is making, the choice that Republican leaders in Congress are making is that in order to pay for these tax cuts, this Congress is going to have to cut Social Security and Medicare. It is the wrong choice. It is the wrong idea for America. It is a violation of American values, our family values that help our families send our kids to college and build the kind of life-styles and the kind of lives for our children that we so desire.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I think it is pretty offensive that the Vice President is still receiving $3,000 a month from a company which is getting billions of dollars in unbid contracts and he is telling us he has severed ties with that company. I guess I will not say the Vice President lied about it. I am not allowed to say that. I do not quite know how to describe it. But let me move to something else. So we have an administration where the Vice President has done what I just said. We have an administration where the President has said the Medicare bill would cost $400 billion; and I do not want to say the President lied, but then the Medicare bill we find out 7 weeks later cost $530 billion. We find that the President told us one thing about Iraq, I do not want to say he lied, either, but then we find out something else entirely different about Iraq. We hear, and I would mention this, on the front page of a generally pretty conservative newspaper in this city, that the President's people, the administration said just a couple of years ago, way after September 11, we would have 3.4 million more jobs created in 2003 than there were in 2000, yet it turns out we have had 1.7 million jobs fewer. I do not want to say the administration did not tell the truth about that, but their predictions were way, way off. Then the President said, the administration said, the budget deficit would be $14 billion. It has turned into being $521 billion. Mr. Speaker, I think we are seeing here a habit of prevarication, a tendency to tell us one thing and see something else, whether it is the Medicare bill, whether it is Iraq, whether it is the President's connections with this company that is getting billions of taxpayers' dollars and giving to the Vice President $3,000 a week and millions of dollars in stock options. It just does not really quite add up.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I would ask the Chair for advice on how I speak. If the President said something and did something else, if I am not supposed to say he did not tell the truth, what phraseology does the Chair allow me to use in this, I thought, open forum, open body where people can speak freely?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I do not understand what that means. I appreciate the Speaker's comments. So if the Vice President said something and did another, I may say that; but if he said something and did another, I cannot say that he lied about it?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) has put this into a perspective to sort of understand the whole operation in Iraq and what it has meant to this company which had very close ties to private citizen Mr. Cheney, and still has very close ties to Vice President Cheney. That context would be this: We are spending about 1.5 billion taxpayer dollars in Iraq every week, about $1.5 billion every week in Iraq. Some of it is military, some of it is construction, a whole host of activities in Iraq. Not nearly enough of that money goes, frankly, for body armor for our soldiers. As we have seen with the Halliburton scandals, not nearly enough of that money goes to feed or house the troops, or for protective armor on Humvees. We also know where a lot of the money is going. Approximately one-third of the billion and a half, close to $500 million per week, is going to private contractors. Not the Pentagon, not government employees, not soldiers, not what we traditionally think of as a military operation; $500 million roughly per week is going to private corporations. Many of those contracts for these private corporations are unbid contracts. A decision is simply made, possibly by Vice President Cheney, who was CEO at Halliburton and still is on the Halliburton payroll. Some of that money is given in unbid contracts to Halliburton and other companies. Halliburton has $2 billion in unbid contracts. I have had regular meetings with Guard and Reserve families in my district. I do not think that the public understands, nor did I before I met with some of these families, when someone is in Iraq as a Guard or Reserve member, it almost always creates financial hardship for their family stateside. In other words, if you are making $30,000 or $40,000 working here, you give up that salary and go to Iraq with the Guard or Reserve, your family has significant financial pain as a result of your going overseas. One woman told me her husband was driving a truck as a National Guard member, getting paid about $1,500 a month, between Kuwait and Iraq. Next to him was another gentleman driving a truck that worked for Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, who was paid about $7,000 a month. The guy working for the taxpayers for the armed services in our Army was obviously wearing a uniform and getting paid $1,500 a month, and was a target of obviously terrorist acts and Iraqi sharpshooters and suicide bombers. The civilian was less of a target because he did not have a military uniform on and was paid four or five times as much. That is what this privatization of the military has done, coupled with the fact that not only is he paid that $7,000, Halliburton is able to charge cost plus. They are able to charge the government the $7,000 plus a certain profit markup. So the more that they pay their private civilians, this truck driver or their executives especially who are in Iraq, the more they can add on to the price, the cost to the taxpayers, as a result of these cost plus contracts. So we have Halliburton as a private contractor bringing in billions of taxpayer dollars, and we have the Vice President of the United States who still is on the Halliburton payroll. When you think about that, we as a Nation, our taxpayers are funding unbid contracts to one of America's largest companies which has direct ties to the Vice President of the United States, it is a pretty incredible phenomenon, something the national media which generally does not like, and some of the national media are actually owned by defense contractors. GE owns NBC, for example, so it is no surprise they do not want to talk about that, and the list goes on. The fact is that Halliburton, a company which has gotten literally a couple of billion dollars in private contracts, has close ties to Vice President Cheney. Let me mention a couple of comments, and then let me mention a couple of other facts. Vice President Cheney said before the election, ``What I will have to do, assuming we are successful in the election, is divest myself, that is sell my remaining shares that I have in the company.'' CNN reported in late 2003, a congressional report found that Cheney still owns, quote, more than 433,000 Halliburton stock options, including 100,000 shares at $54.50 a share, 33,333 shares at $28 a share and 300,000 shares at $39.50 per share. This is a company that gets billions of dollars in unbid contracts, the decision being made, perhaps by the Vice President, perhaps by the President, certainly somebody at the White House, and he has stock options in this company. That is one example. Mr. Cheney early this year said, ``I severed my ties with Halliburton when I became a candidate for Vice President in August of 2000.'' He said that this year. Yet CNN reported along with 433,000 stock options, Cheney still receives $150,000 a year from Halliburton. The Vice President of the United States is paid $3,000 a month from a company that gets billions of dollars in unbid contracts of taxpayer dollars. I am not saying that Vice President Cheney is making all these decisions because he is on their payroll, but he is on their payroll. He receives, not $3,000 a month, $3,000 a week, $150,000 a year, $3,000 a week by Halliburton, yet these unbid contracts continue. He also said this during the campaign: ``What happens financially by joining the ticket with Governor Bush obviously means I take a bath in one sense,'' meaning he was going to make less money. The New York Times said Halliburton has agreed to let Mr. Cheney retire with a package worth an estimated $20 million according to people who reviewed the deal. This contract is still giving and giving and giving and giving. One more example. Then private citizen Cheney in August of 2000: ``I'll do whatever I have to do to avoid a conflict of interest. I'll eliminate the conflict, I can assure you. I've said repeatedly I will not tolerate or be a party to a conflict of interest while I'm Vice President. I'll do whatever I have to do to resolve that conflict.'' CNN just a few months ago said a congressional report found that more than 433,000 stock options he possesses is considered among the ties he retained or linkages to former employers that may represent a continuing conflict of interest. I do not know which is more astounding or which is more outrageous and which is, frankly, more immoral, the fact that he continues to get paid by this company while shoveling billions of taxpayers' dollars in unbid contracts to this company or the fact that Vice President Cheney is not telling the truth about it. This is an administration, as we are learning more and more, that falls short of telling the truth. Vice President Cheney did not tell the truth about his willingness to cut ties with his company. He did not tell the truth about the unbid contracts. He is not telling the truth about the money he is still receiving from Halliburton. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, all of us now are familiar with the economic report of the President of the United States. It is the report put out by the chief economic adviser for the President. It is signed by George Bush on page 4, signed by the chairman of the President's top economists in the country, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Greg Mankiw. We have heard lots of media coverage that in this report the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors says outsourcing is a good thing; that an economic concept that they learned in graduate school called comparative advantage means if you can make something cheaper overseas, you ought to close down the American plant and make it overseas. They said outsourcing is a good thing, while a State like mine in Ohio has lost one out of six manufacturing jobs. They go on to predict we will create in this country under the Bush economic plan 2.6 million jobs this year. They also promised 3 million jobs a couple of years ago. We have actually lost manufacturing jobs in this country because of the Bush economic plan. The response to every economic problem is more trickle-down economics, cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans hoping it trickles down and creates jobs. That has not worked. Their other answer is more trade agreements, expanding NAFTA to Central America, the so-called Central American Free Trade Agreement, expand NAFTA to the rest of Latin America called the Free Trade Area of the Americas. None of that is working. We are seeing loss of jobs. In the district of the gentlewoman from Indiana (Ms. Carson) or the district of the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), we are seeing continued shipping of jobs overseas, continued outsourcing, as the President applauds in his Council's report, continuing hemorrhaging of jobs all over the world. But something that was also in this report which is even more amazing, the President has not been able to figure out how to stem the tide of economic job loss. We created in the Clinton years 25 million jobs. We have lost in the Bush years 3 million jobs, a huge portion of them manufacturing jobs. No President since Herbert Hoover has actually lost jobs during his administration, a record that George Bush is now competing with. The President, because he cannot seem to figure out how to create manufacturing jobs, the President in his report is saying regarding manufacturing jobs, maybe we ought to consider changing the definition of manufacturing jobs. They said the definition, and this is in the President's report signed by the President on page 4, the definition of a manufactured product is not straightforward. When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a service job, which is what we always thought, or, according to the President, is it combining inputs to manufacture a product? So these fast-food workers at $6 and $7 an hour, maybe we are going to call them manufacturing jobs. I am not making this up; this is in the President's report. They said manufacturing if someone is engaged in the mechanical, physical or chemical transformation of materials, substances or components into new products. So we have the $6-an-hour high school student in McDonald's standing there. First he unwraps the bread, which is like something you would do in a factory building cars. He unwraps the bread, puts the bun down, and takes the hamburger. He has to change chemically the hamburger. We would call that cooking it, but under the new-speak of the President's report, he is going to chemically change the hamburger so instead of being raw, it is now chemically altered or cooked. Then there is the cheese. If it is a cheeseburger, it is an even more complicated manufacturing process. The worker needs to chemically change the cheese. We would call it melting, but in the new-speak, we call it chemical change of the cheese. That cheese is then put on the burger. Next he has to unwrap the lettuce head and put lettuce on the hamburger. Next he slices the tomato. All of these manufacturing components are going into this new hamburger. Mr. Speaker, my point is the President's answer to what are we doing about loss of manufacturing jobs in this country is to reclassify manufacturing and say that these service jobs that pay $7 an hour, instead of the $20 an hour that workers in my district make, or workers at Goodyear in Akron building tires were making, instead of $20 an hour with pensions, with good health care benefits, we are now going to say we lost those manufacturing jobs, but we have other manufacturing jobs at McDonald's. And I do not mean to leave out Burger King, Arby's or some of the other fast-food restaurants that are actually manufacturing their hamburgers. Mr. Speaker, I think we see the ludicrousness of this. This country has to change its economic policy and change its direction. We need to say no to this trickle-down economics which give the tax breaks to the wealthiest people in the hope that they will create some jobs. That is not working. We have to say no to trade agreements that are shipping jobs overseas.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, my colleague put his finger right on it when we talk about these workers and the way that they are paid. The key to our Nation's success, and the gentleman mentioned Henry Ford before, the key to our Nation's success is that workers share in the wealth they create. They are able to do that because we have a democracy. They are able to do that because we have a relatively strong labor union movement. They are able to do that because of mobility of labor, and a whole bunch of reasons in a free society here. When workers are more productive, as they are in the United States, as they increasingly get more productive, that means their wages should go up. They have not in large part because of the downward pull of these trade agreements. In Mexico, for instance, and I remember David Bonior, the former Democratic whip, talking about this a dozen years ago, as productivity went up in Mexico, wages did not go up with them because they had a government that was authoritarian by and large, because they did not have free trade unions. They had government- controlled, business-controlled trade unions. So do we want a country like that? Do we want a country where the workers share in the wealth they produce, or do we want a country like a bunch of Wal-Marts, where the workers barely get minimum wage in many cases, rarely have health benefits, and often have to work off the clock while the Wal-Mart family, several members of the Wal-Mart family, rank as some of the richest people in the country? Billions of dollars have accrued to many members of the family, billions and billions, tens of billions to many members of the family, but the workers do not really share in the wealth they produce. That is a society that I do not think we want. We have seen that this country worked best, as the gentleman from Oregon mentioned, when workers at Ford got paid a wage where they could buy the cars, and workers all across the board were paid a decent livable wage that made an absolute difference in their lives. I go back, Mr. Speaker, to some of the promises we have seen in this administration's economic policy. Understand again that the foundation of their economic policy is more tax cuts for the wealthiest people in our society and more trade agreements that end up shipping jobs overseas. That is the foundation of their society. It makes the wealthy, the Bush contributors, wealthier; it weakens and dilutes the middle class; and it is particularly hard on families barely making it. We are going to see more promises in the next 8 months, as we have seen all along. This administration promised 3.4 million jobs. After September 11 they made a promise there would be 3.4 million more jobs in 2003 than there were when he took office. In fact, what we have seen is 1.7 million jobs lost. Again, more tax cuts for the rich and more trade agreements that ship jobs overseas. That is what the economic job loss is all about. President Bush at the same time said we will have a budget deficit of only $14 billion. In fact, the budget deficit is $521 billion. We see these kinds of promises, and we will see them again. We see it in the new economic report. They promise 2.6 million jobs this year alone. Now they are backing off that. That is 200,000 jobs a month, and we are creating no jobs per month and we are still losing manufacturing jobs. They simply have not lived up to any of their promises. The only promise they live up to is a promise to their corporate contributors that they will continue to do them favors, they will continue to enrich them with their tax policy, and with the new laws they make on the Medicare bill and the Social Security bill and the environmental bills and the energy bills. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. We think about this. He mentioned when he introduced his idea to better monitor and study and pay attention to, if you will, focus, on the trade deficit, how it has gone up since 1997. The trade deficit for the entire year of 1992 was smaller than the trade deficit, or was about equivalent in 1992 to the trade deficit for 1 month last month. We had a trade deficit of about $40 billion a dozen years ago. We have a trade deficit in excess of $40 billion a month now. I mean, that is what that means. But more importantly, as the gentleman from Oregon pointed out, what that really means is that we are continuing to get further and further in debt as a Nation to foreign investors, to investors in other countries. That means that the Chinese, with their $100 billion a year in U.S. currency, the trade surplus they have with our country, the fact that they sell us so much more than we buy from them, the Chinese take that $100 billion and are beginning to buy up a lot of scrap steel in the United States, driving up prices of steel, of scrap for U.S. manufacturers, making it harder for them to compete. They are also buying energy companies in the United States, again driving up the cost of natural gas for American manufacturers and putting them more and more behind the eightball. And, as the gentleman from Oregon said, when the worm turns, as economists like to say in their ivory and their traditional economic theory, when the worm turns, and our trade deficit gets so overwhelming that eventually the value of the dollar drops, we begin to produce more to sell to them, our factories are hollowed out. Our factories are not manufacturing things, because so many of them are closed. They are not going to be able to retool just because all of a sudden prices are a bit higher. But what is disturbing about the economic report that the gentleman mentioned, and then I want to yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), who absolutely gets it on these job issues, partly because we live in a State where we have seen our economy devastated by these Bush economic policies, but what is disturbing about the economic report that Mr. Mankiw put out, the President's chief economic adviser, and that President Bush signed, is that they really see nothing wrong with the direction we are going. So what, we have a huge trade deficit. So what, we have a huge budget deficit. Let us keep doing tax cuts that overwhelmingly go to the most privileged; let us keep doing trade agreements that ship jobs overseas, in large part because profits right now are up for major corporations. So if the companies are making money, as the Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said, if the stock market is going up, then there is really nothing wrong. What is wrong, as Mr. Mankiw said, outsourcing is a good thing when blue-collar jobs; white-collar jobs, phone operators, computer engineers, computer programmers, when those jobs go overseas, I think there is something wrong with that, and it is mostly because George Bush and Mr. Mankiw have never looked an Akron rubber worker in the eyes, or never looked a paper worker in Oregon in the eye, or never looked a Silicon Valley in California, a computer programmer in the eye and say, yes, outsourcing is a good thing. Sorry about your job. Maybe you can get a job at Wal-Mart, or maybe you can get a job at McDonald's. Speaking of McDonald's, and then I will yield to my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), in this economic report, something the media have not paid much attention to, and that is these economists, and these are not exactly people who know a lot of people who work in America's factories, but these economists are having a debate inside the Bush administration on how to classify manufacturing. Now, we have lost one out of six jobs in manufacturing in Ohio. We have lost literally well over 2 million jobs nationally in manufacturing, and they are trying to figure out how to define manufacturing. Well, they are debating whether or not to define the fast food restaurant industry as a service job or a manufacturing job, because, you know, if you work in McDonald's, it is not just like somebody comes up and orders, and you take it off the shelf and give it to them. I am not making this up, it sounds like it, but it is in the Bush administration's book, you have to manufacture these hamburgers. You have to take the bun, you got to unwrap it, so you take the wrapping off, you take it out of the box, unwrap it, put the bun down; then you have to take the hamburger, and you have to chemically change the hamburger, it is a chemical process called cooking, put the hamburger on the grill, and put it on the bun after it is cooked. Then you have to get the cheese, and you might have to chemically alter the cheese because you have to melt the cheese. You put the cheese on the hamburger, and then you add a couple of things. You add a slice of tomato, so that is an extra element in the manufacturing. You put the tomato on, unwrap the lettuce, peel the lettuce off the head, so that may be another manufacturing part. This is pretty complex; almost like making a Ford in Ohio or manufacturing steel or making tires in Akron, Ohio, used to be.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I begin this evening by offering the comments of my colleague, the gentlewoman from Cleveland, Ohio (Mrs. Jones), who could not stay with us this evening, but to announce her support of our efforts, or opposition, if you will, to the Central American Free Trade Agreement and her good work on opposing this agreement that will expand NAFTA to Central America and ultimately lead to the quadrupling of low-income workers, the doubling of the size of NAFTA and more hemorrhaging of American jobs. Mr. Speaker, President Bush last Friday officially notified Congress that he supports the Central American Free Trade Agreement, that he plans to send it to Congress, probably sometime in May, and this body sometime after that will make a decision on whether it wants to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement. It just amazes me, Mr. Speaker, that President Bush continues the same very much failed economic policies that he has promoted in this country for the last 3 years. The Bush economic policies basically are twofold: continued tax cuts for people who need it least, for the most wealthy people in our society. Roughly half the tax cuts have gone to the wealthiest 1 percent of people in this country as we continue to run up huge budget deficits. That is one part of the President's economic recovery program which has led us to a jobless recovery, or, more precisely, Mr. Speaker, a job-loss recovery. One aspect is tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans as part of his policy for economic recovery. The other part is to continue to pass trade agreements which have, frankly, shipped jobs overseas. That is why he is asking Congress, because he believes these trade agreements for some reason seem to be helping; but it is pretty clear we have lost lots and lots of manufacturing jobs, to China, Mexico, south of the border, across the ocean, to countries all over the world. Mr. Speaker, in my State of Ohio, one out of six manufacturing jobs has simply disappeared since President Bush took office. That means that tens of thousands of Ohioans are out of work; literally hundreds of thousands of Americans in manufacturing have been thrown out of work. And it means something else: 30 or 40 years ago when we were in the midst of a recession, you figured most of those jobs, seven out of 10, statistics say, would return, people would get their jobs back. They would have temporary layoffs at a Ford plant, temporary layoffs at a steel mill. Seven out of 10 of those jobs would come back. Three of them would be lost forever. Other jobs might be created during a recovery. During the Bush recession and recovery, they are predicting now only three of the 10 manufacturing jobs lost will return, and they have not even returned yet. So we have this jobless job-loss recovery, when the President says his tax cuts are working. They may be working for upper- income people who both get the tax cuts and now are seeing the stock market doing a little better, only a little better; but they are not working for Ohioans who have lost jobs. They simply are not working. The promises the President made simply have not been fulfilled. The front page of The Washington Post today, a newspaper that has been pretty pro-Bush on Medicare, very pro-Bush on Iraq, pretty pro- Bush on a whole host of issues, this newspaper wrote on the front page, talked about the Bush job forecast. With President Bush, every time he issues a statement, an economic report, every time he introduces legislation on the economy to Congress, he makes predictions. He predicted there would be 3.4 million more jobs in 2003 than there were in 2000. Now, this prediction was not made before September 11, upon which he blames much of the economic stumbling, economic recession in some places, depression in others in this country. This was a prediction made 2 years ago. The President said by 2003 there would be 3.4 million more jobs in this country than there were when he took office. You know what? We have actually seen a loss of 1.7 million jobs; 1.7 million fewer jobs today than when President Bush took office. That is some kind of a record. There has not been a President of the United States for 7 decades that has actually seen a net loss of jobs during his presidency. Herbert Hoover was the last one, and Herbert Hoover obviously paid a political price at the next election; and, more importantly, Herbert Hoover paid a historical price in that he became the President that perhaps managed the economy worse than any President in the last century, until this President, who is kind of competing for the same kinds of records. The President also predicted a couple of years ago the budget deficit would be down to $14 billion. Well, it turns out that the budget deficit is $521 billion. So he predicted, way after September 11, a couple of years ago, he predicted a 3.4 million jobs increase and a budget deficit of $14 billion. He got a 1.7 million job loss and a budget deficit of $521 billion. Again, The Washington Post, not exactly a liberal newspaper, a paper that supported President Bush on most of his initiatives, the headline in The Post, ``Bush assertion on tax cuts is at odds with IRS data.'' President Bush runs the IRS; and still his statistics, even according to them, are inaccurate. Now, we talked earlier about the tax cuts being the mantra. Whenever there are economic problems or whenever there are jobs lost, the President decides to cut taxes. Well, he also talks about trade agreements. Let me talk for a moment, and then my friend, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), is also here and will join us and talk about some of these issues also. The President has said that he is going to bring the Central American Free Trade Agreement to this Congress. If there is anything obvious to the American people, steelworkers in Ohio, lumber workers in Oregon where the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is, paper mill workers, auto workers in my State, rubber workers in my State, tool and die makers in my State, if there is something obvious to all of them, it is they believe an awful lot of their jobs have been lost overseas, because we have seen this kind of hemorrhaging of jobs, shipping of jobs overseas. This week I was at a plant, Ohio Screw Products, in Elyria, Ohio, in my district, with Dan Imbrogno, who runs this company. They have about 70 full-time and a handful of temporary workers who punch out bolts and make products to be components in other products of all kinds, including some defense work. But mostly he has seen a threat of jobs going to China, a threat of jobs going to Mexico, a threat of jobs going further south across the southern border in this country; and he just shakes his head, as do the workers who I met with at this company over lunch on one other visit a few months ago, just shake their heads over American trade policy. Why do we keep passing it? Why do we want to extend NAFTA, clearly a broken trade agreement, to the rest of Latin America? It is not working in Mexico. Why should we double it in size and population and quadruple it in terms of the number of low-income workers? When we passed NAFTA in this body, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) and I both opposed it in 1993. When we passed that legislation, that agreement, we had a trade surplus with Mexico. Today our trade deficit with Mexico is $25 billion. Now, President Bush's father, who presided over a similar kind of economic decline, although this one is significantly worse than his father's, but President Bush, Sr., said for every $1 billion in trade, because trade entails usually manufacturing of goods, for every $1 billion in trade, we lose or gain 18,000 jobs. So, in other words, if you have a $1 billion trade surplus, it means you are making a lot of things, selling them overseas, for every $1 billion in sales hiring about 18,000 American workers. If you have a trade deficit, as we have, you see it go the other way. So we now have a trade deficit with China of over $100 billion, a trade deficit overall around the world of some $400 billion. All you have to do is do the math to see the kind of job loss that brings to our country. So the answer from President Bush is more tax cuts for the richest people in our country and more trade agreements that hemorrhage jobs, that ship more jobs overseas? It simply does not add up. In a moment I will yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio). In a moment I will give some more details about what the Central American Free Trade Agreement actually does to our Nation, to our economy, and especially to manufacturing in my part of the country, where we are seeing these jobs shipped overseas every day, plant closings, layoffs, threats of more plant closings, threats by management to move overseas, so that workers see their wages stagnate or even go down with give-backs, all that happens with these trade policies; yet President Bush says we have got to do more of them because, frankly, I think that helps his investor friends, his major campaign contributors, the people who seem to have the most influence in this administration on economic policy. Not working families, union or nonunion; not small businesses that are struggling, but the people that have the influence in this administration; not Ohio Screw Products in O'Leary, Ohio, but are the large companies that gain from the trade agreements, they gain profits as they shed workers in this country. Those are the only people that benefit. It is President Bush and his campaign kitty and those companies, those executives and those investors that shift jobs overseas and pad their pockets and make bigger profits and get bigger bonuses. I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Oregon, who is holding one of his favorite books there that can tell more than I know.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the point is that the Bush administration, the Bush's chief economic adviser, Gregory Mankiw, with the President's signature on this economic policy, does not see anything wrong with the direction they want to take this country's manufacturing: huge numbers of loss of jobs, reclassifying, underpaid service jobs with no benefits as manufacturing for political purposes, making excuses, justifying this all in the name of this global economy that helps wealthy investors, i.e., helps Bush contributors but hurts workers in the U.S., hurts farmers in the U.S., hurts ranchers in the U.S., hurts workers in the developing world but helps the wealthy of both countries. It simply does not make sense. I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), who has been a real leader in trying to do the right things to restore Ohio's and America's industrial base.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. The answer to that is pretty obvious; but what is interesting, I remember standing on this floor 10 years ago with David Bonior, who was the real leader on these trade issues in Congress years ago, and they promised in those days with NAFTA that only the good- paying jobs would stay and these low-end, low-wage jobs would go overseas; and over time in Mexico they would begin to have stronger environmental laws, over time they would make higher wages, over time they would have good labor law, worker safety, all of that. But as the gentleman from Oregon's (Mr. DeFazio) questions intimate, obviously these countries are not moving in that direction. In fact, we are seeing our country move in their direction. Our country move in their direction in terms of there are significantly fewer pension systems in this country, good pensions for workers than there were 10 years ago, and particularly fewer than there were in 1973 when this trade debacle really started in this country. That was really a key year in terms of turning the way we did trade. We have seen our pension system atrophy. We have seen wages stagnate in most of these 30 years. We have seen environmental laws and States played off against States, and the Federal Government played off against the Mexican Government to weaken all these standards. Food safety laws are not as enforced, and clearly our food supply is not as safe as it would be if these trade agreements would actually raise their standards. Instead of passing a trade agreement with Latin America to raise up their living standard, to raise their wages, to raise their workplace safety conditions, to raise their food safety standards, to raise environmental standards, we are seeing pressure on our government to bring those standards down so that we can compete with these countries. We should compete with them. They should compete with us, but let us raise living standards so ultimately they can buy our products, have a safer environment, have better food safety, have better worker safety and all that. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for their 10 to 15 years of working on these issues.

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, think about this: we have a President who is always at the beck and call of his corporate contributors. When it comes time to pass a Medicare bill, it is written by the insurance and the drug companies. When it comes time to pass Social Security privatization, it is written by Wall Street. When it comes to pass an environmental law, the President gives us a bill written by the chemical companies or the energy companies. Issue after issue after issue. What we have really seen happen from the gentleman from Ohio's (Mr. Strickland) suggestion, what we have seen is as we pass trade agreements like this, making it harder for us to compete with Chinese workers, with Mexico, with Costa Rica, with El Salvador, one of the things that happens is we have seen a stagnation of U.S. wages and a weakening of food safety, environmental standards, and worker safety standards. We also see in this body many of my Republican friends, particularly Republican leadership, are trying to pass legislation with the President to cut overtime in the U.S., to cut comp time opportunity in the U.S., to weaken environmental standards in the U.S., to weaken food safety standards in the U.S. So what they are doing internationally is in a lot of ways what they are doing domestically. It really does not cause George Bush or Gregory Mankiw, as chief economic adviser, to lose a lot of sleep that U.S. wages are stagnant, does not cause them to lose a lot of sleep if there is a downward pressure, a pulling down of environmental and worker safety standards, because that is what they are doing domestically. So when Mr. Mankiw says they can do it cheaper in other countries, that means they have got comparative advantage, so send them overseas. The only way that we are going to compete in this Bush new world is to weaken our environmental standards, which is what they are trying to do anyway; to cut overtime, which is what they are trying to do anyway; to end comp time, which is what they are trying to do anyway; to roll back food safety, environment worker safety, wages, all of that. That is exactly what they are doing domestically. It is what these trade agreements will do internationally. And who benefits? It is not the workers in Mexico. We have no axe to grind with them. It is not the slave laborers in China or the workers in awful conditions that are not slave labor in China, but the exploited generally, I was going to say young women, but really girls because they are not old enough to be women yet. We have no quarrel with them. They are hurt by these trade agreements just like American workers are hurt; but the investors who fund the Bush campaign and the chemical companies, the drug companies, the insurance companies, they get their legislation through. They love these trade agreements because it means more profits and it means more bonuses for these executives. I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).