Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, 75 years ago this November, Ohio's first national forest was established. On November 12, 1935, 43 acres in the Appalachian foothills of Lawrence County became the Wayne National Forest. Today, more than 240,000 acres of reclaimed and reforested land spanning 12 counties makeup the ``Wayne.'' For 75 years, rangers, foresters, and dedicated volunteers have worked to restore landscapes that had been abandoned or stripped bare by mining and logging. The early years of the Wayne corresponded with President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, CCC. The CCC gave young people across the country work--and a hot meal-- improving our Nation's infrastructure and preserving our natural resources. The legacy of the CCC lives on in the Wayne's Shawnee and Snake Ridge Lookout Towers, constructed in 1939, and the Vesuvius Dam, completed in 1941 and now home to wildlife and recreational activities on the lake. With the help of President Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Wayne National Forest is once again preparing for the future; restoring ecosystems, improving roads, and installing more than 250 solar panels on its headquarters in Nelsonville. Home to more than 300 miles of trails, the Wayne receives thousands of visitors and families each year who go hiking, biking, hunting, horseback riding, and camping along the scenic hills and hollows of the forest. The Wayne has also played an important role in preserving the storied history of the Adena and Hopewell Cultures in Ohio. Because the archaeological ruins of these mound-building cultures have been maintained, a new generation of visitors will learn about the history of Native Americans in Ohio. Our public lands, and in particular the Wayne, are part of Ohio's heritage and history. John F. Seiberling, a former Congressman from Akron and longtime conservationist said, ``We will never see the land as our ancestors did. But we can understand what made it beautiful and why they lived and died to preserve it. And in preserving it for future generations, we will preserve something of ourselves. If we all have an interest in this land, then we all have a stake in its preservation. There is no more worthwhile cause.'' The Wayne has strengthened the region's economy and encouraged responsible stewardship of southeast Ohio's varied ecosystems and habitats. I congratulate and thank the rangers, staff, and supporters who for 75 years have served as stewards of Wayne National Forest. When Thomas Jefferson granted Ohio's statehood 207 years ago, southeastern Ohio was the gateway to our nation's westward expansion--and Marietta the first official town of the newly established Northwest Territory. Wayne National Forest plays a vital role in our frontier history and will continue to serve as a getaway for the tens of thousands of Ohioans who enjoy its beauty and embrace its role as one of Ohio's natural crown jewels.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I know Senator Barrasso is relatively new in Washington, House or Senate. I appreciate his words. I am not talking about him. But there are so many opponents of this health care legislation. First of all, regarding some of the partisan opponents of this law-- the American people do not want to see us relitigate and redebate the health care legislation. They want some focus on job growth. But what strikes me as a bit hypocritical--again, I am not singling out Senator Barrasso because he has not been here very long--there are so many Members in the House of Representatives and in the Senate who have enjoyed government health care for a decade or two or three, where taxpayers paid for their health care. Those conservative Members did nothing, zero, to help those people without insurance, to help those people who had preexisting conditions, to help those people close the doughnut hole, help senior citizens to get help on their drug costs. Now they want to repeal the health care bill. In other words, they want to keep their government insurance for themselves, but they don't seem to want to help anybody else out there. It just sickens me. More important, I don't think the public wants us to continue debating health care. The public wants us to work on job growth, to focus on things like I did in Ohio Monday where I gathered 300 small businesses, people who make things, who want to sell to major aerospace manufacturers, in this case Airbus in my State, putting people to work--because that is what it is all about. Mr. President, I want to speak for a moment about food safety. It is tempting to take the safety of our food supply as given, but it is actually more a goal, one that continues to elude us. Each year in the United States 76 million people contract a foodborne illness. Some get mildly sick, some get very sick, a few actually die. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than a few, 5,000 people a year, die from foodborne illness. These are mostly not people in their thirties who are healthy. It is the very young, very old, those whose health may be frail, whose health may not be as strong as others'. Nonetheless, 5,000 people die a year. Over the last few years we faced melamine in infant formula, harmful seafood from China, tainted peppers from Mexico, E. coli in spinach, Salmonella in peanuts. Sometimes it is international problems. Sometimes it is domestic problems. International problems mean we ought to be looking at trade policy closer than we have, but that is a debate for another day. A few months ago we had a nationwide recall of eggs due to Salmonella contamination. Just this week we saw a recall of smoked turkey breast products because of Listeria contamination. The safety of Americans is threatened by a regulatory structure that has failed to keep pace with modern changes in food production, processing, and marketing. We have at our grocery stores a wonderful thing. We have all kinds of selections: fresh fruits and vegetables and fish and all kinds of foods we didn't have when I was growing up in the 1960s in Mansfield, OH. We did not have that kind of selection in food stores, especially in the winter months. Now we do. That is a great thing, but we don't do what we need to do to guarantee its safety. It is time to fix this broken system once and for all. The time has come for Congress to pass legislation that will in fact improve our country's food safety system. America's families should be able to put food on the table without fearing any kind of contamination. We shouldn't worry that the food in the school cafeterias, ballparks, grocery stores, or local restaurants will send a child to the hospital and spread panic throughout the community. That is why I am so pleased we are considering the Food Safety Modernization Act. This legislation will address--I will talk briefly about it and then yield to my colleague from Delaware, Senator Carper-- some of the problems with our current food safety system. It will require facilities to conduct an analysis of the most likely food safety hazards and design and implement risk-based controls to prevent them. It would increase the frequency of plant inspections. It would strengthen recordkeeping requirements and food traceability systems so we know where the food came from before it gets to the grocery store. It provides the FDA with the authority to mandate food recalls, something that is voluntary now. Most companies step forward and do it. Some do not. Some delay before they do, imposing health risks. It would ensure further study by the FDA on enhanced safety and sanitary methods for the transportation of foods, and we must ensure this includes an examination of the pallets on which our food is shipped. At home you don't use the same cutting board for chicken that you use for vegetables, or at least you should not, because of potential food safety problems. It is the same thing with these wooden pallets because they can collect--especially wooden pallets--way more bacteria than you can imagine. We require more extensive provisions for heightened security of imports which account for an increasing share of our fresh fruits and vegetables, an increasing share of U.S. food consumption. This bill is here today because of the strong work especially of Senator Durbin of Illinois and Representative John Dingell of Michigan. Also, I commend Ranking Member Enzi on the HELP Committee and Chairman Harkin and Senators Dodd, Burr, and Gregg for their work. I also commend the Kroger Company based in Cincinnati, OH, for the work they and other grocery store chains and other food processing companies have done collectively to make sure this legislation works for them on the traceability issue. Many of them, many of these companies, have already set up good traceability provisions by themselves without government involvement. I think Kroger is especially to be commended for doing that. The best way to ensure the FDA can decisively respond to foodborne outbreaks is to authorize a comprehensive food tracing system, as I mentioned. Earlier this year I introduced S. 425, the Food Safety and Tracing Improvement Act. It would improve the ability of Federal agencies to trace the origins of all contaminated food. I am very pleased that important components and goals of my legislation are included in the managers' amendment. With the addition of these stronger traceability provisions, the FDA will be tasked with establishing a tracing system for both unprocessed and processed food, such as peanut butter. The 2008-2009 peanut butter Salmonella outbreak which sickened more than 700 people and resulted in 9 deaths demonstrates exactly why the FDA needs expanded authority to trace foods. One victim of the peanut butter Salmonella outbreak was Nellie Napier of Medina, OH. Ms. Napier was an 80-year-old mother of 6 children, 13 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren. She got ill in January of 2009, almost 2 years ago, after eating a peanut butter product tainted with Salmonella. When she got sick, doctors told her family there was nothing they could do and she died shortly thereafter. The FDA was able to identify the source of the outbreak in a short period of time, but it was incredibly difficult and time consuming for the FDA to determine where all the contaminated peanut butter ended up. The source company sold to 85 other companies. They sold to another 1,500 companies, and many of those companies sold to other companies. There were no trace-back provisions to be able to help and warn others of potential contamination. Last year, the Inspector General released a report entitled ``Traceability in the Food Supply Chain.'' This report identified significant and unacceptable difficulties in tracing food through the supply chain. The report attempted to trace 40 products through each stage of the food supply chain. They were able only to trace 5 of the 40. That is why we know how important this legislation is. We required the FDA to establish a product tracing system and develop additional recordkeeping requirements for foods the FDA determines to be high risk. We require the Comptroller General to examine and provide recommendations regarding how to further improve the product tracing system. We don't know everything yet that we need to do. This gives the FDA and the Comptroller General guidance and leadership and the authority, in addition to what we have done, to do it in the right way. I thank Senators Harkin, Enzi, Durbin, Burr, Dodd, and Gregg for the work they have done, and Representative Diana DeGette from Denver and Senators Merkley and Franken, who have been particularly strong advocates working with me. The goal is to make food safety a foregone conclusion. It is what Americans expect. It is what we have had through many years. We have moved away from that. This puts us right on course to do it right. I thank the President, and I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, will the Senator from Michigan yield?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Michigan for her work on this legislation--she was here late in the evening yesterday--and the effort she has put forward. It was 10 years ago this month that the Senate passed permanent normal trade relations with China. Initially, that was called most- favored-nation status, as Senator Stabenow remembers. They dressed it up, cleaned it up, put lipstick on the pig, and decided they should call it something else. We know what it has done to our country. We had a trade deficit with China in the fairly low double digits back 10 years ago. Today, our bilateral trade deficit with China is $260 billion. I believe last year it was $240 billion. The first President Bush said that $1 billion in trade deficit translates into 13,000 jobs. So if we have a trade surplus of $1 billion, it means we are selling a lot more than buying and have gained 13,000 jobs. If we have a trade deficit of $1 billion, we have a 13,000 job loss. Well, we have a trade deficit with China alone of $260 billion, so we know what that means. Look at what this PNTR with China has done. Look at what our tax laws and trade laws have done, and this legislation will begin to fix the tax laws. Look at what tax laws and trade laws have done to the middle class, to our manufacturing base in Toledo, OH, and Monroe, MI, and points north and south of there. It has all been based on this sort of cynical business plan. Not since colonial times have we seen the world where a company--an industry--will close their manufacturing in our country, they will move their production line and build factories in another country and then sell back their products to the United States. Never before have large numbers of businesses and industries done that, to my knowledge. Now we are seeing what damage it has caused to the middle class. We see the manufacturing job loss. We went from 1 million manufacturing jobs 10 years ago to, during the Bush years, that number shrinking to 600,000 manufacturing jobs in this country. We are seeing progress. This legislation is progress. Clearly, I am hopeful our Republican colleagues won't object, as they typically have. They know people who have lost jobs, I assume, and they understand that. But we have also seen the President begin to enforce trade laws.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I wish to echo the comments of the Senator from Vermont who has been discussing and debating and critiquing and understanding these issues of job sourcing as well as anybody in this institution. I am incredulous that we are fighting to bring this legislation to the floor, this legislation which will help us rebuild our industrial base, which will help us create, enlarge, strengthen the middle class, which helps us with our budget deficit and our trade deficit and will help us again become a country that knows how to make things. In my State of Ohio we know how to make things. We know how to make chemicals and paper and cement and steel and autos and aluminum and glass. We led the Nation in many of those things. Yet look around and we see what has happened in our country. The bill we are debating today is about helping Americans, not appeasing the Fortune 500, which is what the Republicans are doing tonight. It is about saving jobs. It is not about padding corporate bonuses. As they have done again and again over the last year and a half, my Republican colleagues are selling out the middle class. I wonder if my Republican colleagues have met people who have lost their jobs to China; if they know anybody who has seen a plant close and they know what it does to the family. They lose their job, they lose their health insurance, they sometimes lose their house. They have to explain to their teenage children: Sorry, we are going to have to move. You are not going to have your own room anymore. I am not even sure what school district you are going to go to. Do they know people such as that when they stand up on an issue this important, and their answer is to talk about the budget deficit as if they didn't run the largest surplus in American history 10 years ago into the largest budget deficit in American history in 8 short years of George Bush government, of tax cuts to the rich, wars that were not paid for, bailouts to the drug and insurance companies in the name of Medicare privatization, deregulation of Wall Street and these trade agreements that continue to send jobs overseas? Let me put up a chart here to show some examples in my State of some companies that are pretty well known: ``American Standard Company factory in Tiffin To Close.'' If you go into a restroom, most of the plumbing equipment was once made by American Standard in Tiffin, OH. Bain Capital out of Massachusetts, Governor Romney's company, came in and basically did away with that company. ``Etch A Sketch Leaves Home.'' Etch A Sketch is called the Ohio Art Company, in Bryan, OH. A small town at the corner of Senator Stabenow's Michigan and Indiana. Walmart came to Ohio Art Company and said: We want to make Etch A Sketch. We want to sell it at Walmart for under $10. The only thing that Ohio Art Company could do was shut down that part of the factory and move it to China. One hundred years of vacuum cleaner production comes to an end in Stark County in Canton, OH. Same story. To the lowest bidder go the lowest paying jobs. Huffy Bicycle, Celina OH, on the Indiana border. Senator Dorgan has talked about what happened to Huffy Bicycle. So they moved that bicycle production to China. These were good-paying, industrial, union jobs usually--not all union jobs. They do not have to be union jobs. But they were jobs that created a middle class. But do you know what has happened? Not since colonial times has American business had a business plan where they lobby Congress to change the rules. My Republican friends all go along with them because it is part of the big corporate agenda; they lobby Congress to change the rules, they then shut down their plants. In Burlington, VT, in Providence, RI, in Detroit, MI, and Toledo, OH, they shut down their plants, they move them to China, they obviously exploit the lowest paid workers they can get. They then sell the goods back to their home country. They shut down the plants here, they move them 7 or 8 or 9 or 10,000 miles away. Then they sell the produced products back home to the United States. Look what that does to individual people. Again, to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, do they know people who lost their jobs when a plant closed and went to Mexico? Do they know people who lost their health insurance when a plant shut down and went to China? Do they know people who had their homes foreclosed on because they lost their jobs and their health insurance and they have nowhere else to turn? Yet, instead of debating this, instead of their standing and arguing in support of these tax laws and trade laws that have started to bankrupt our country, and surely have caused our industry to decline, they just change the subject. They do not want to debate it. Senator Durbin said--and I would echo it and make the same offer. I will go to any State in the country with any of my Republican colleagues and we will have an open, fair debate on this tax law and on this trade law. I would love to go anywhere in the United States and have a public debate to show the public and show the American people how much this has undermined our sovereignty, our wealth, our manufacturing base. They are not willing to debate it. But when we bring this forward, you know they will object, and you know what the Senate rules are. One person can stand and object and we cannot pass the bill. They are more interested, way more interested in scoring political points than they are in debating the merits and showing what exactly we need to do as a nation to begin to restore our manufacturing base. I would conclude with this. I hear my Republican colleagues talk and be critical of everything President Obama has done. That is fine. That is politics. But what they are arguing that we should do is go back to the policies that got us into this. Let me put in a little bit of historical context. Eight years of President Clinton, January 20, 1993, to January 20, 2001. Those 8 years, 22 million private sector net job increase in this country. Eight years, from January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009, 8 years of George Bush, 1 million jobs created, not enough to even keep up with an increase in population. The 8 years of President Clinton, wages went up for the great majority of Americans. Eight years of George Bush, wages went down for the majority of Americans. Eight years of Bill Clinton, at the end of his eighth year, he left a budget surplus that was the highest in American history. After 8 years of George Bush, he left a deficit that, at the time, was the highest in American history, and they have the gall to be critical of everything Barrack Obama has done, like he created this. They have the gall to argue that the voters should choose them to go back to the same philosophy. They are not saying do anything different. They still say tax cuts for the richest Americans. They still say privatization of Medicare and privatization of Social Security. Thank God we did not pass that 5 years ago. They still say more trade agreements that outsource jobs. They still say do not change the tax laws no matter how much damage they have done to us. They still say we should deregulate Wall Street. That is the contrast. That is what this debate is all about, the contrast. Do we want to move forward? Do we want to move forward and write tax law and trade law that will create a middle class so we do not see another American Standard close in Ohio and another Ohio Art Company close and another vacuum cleaner producer and another Huffy Bicycle company close in Ohio and move offshore. In the end, it speaks volumes about Republican loyalties, loyalty to these large corporations that outsource jobs, no real loyalty to communities, no real loyalty to these small companies, and no real loyalty to workers. When a plant closes, we know the heartache it brings to the worker, to the families. We know the damage it does to communities as they lay off teachers and firefighters and mental health counselors and libraries and police officers and we know what it does to the wealth of our country and the standard of living of far too many people. The question ultimately is: Whose side are you on? One thing for sure, it is clear who is on the side of working families in communities. That is why this legislation is so important. That is why we need to move on fixing our trade law and our tax law, so manufacturing jobs begin to move back to this country, and we can protect that industrial base that is so important for our national security and so important for the economic security of our families and of our communities. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 3839, which was introduced earlier today.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Kaufman-Voinovich substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed; that the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, without any intervening action or debate; and that any statements relating to the measure be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 499, S. 3196.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, six months ago our Nation accomplished something that so many generations before had struggled to achieve. Six months ago yesterday, with the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, our Nation stood up and declared that the health of our citizens is worth fighting for. There has been a lot of debate, as the Presiding Officer knows, in this Chamber and in the House of Representatives and on the talk shows and talk radio. There is a lot of debate about theories and death panels and health care and preexisting conditions. But behind all of that is human beings in difficult situations. After hearing people say things about this health care law that simply aren't true, it is important to remember how this affects individual human beings. This legislation began to take effect when, yesterday, several things happened. One is that a 22-year-old who is home from school who just got a job but doesn't have insurance in that job can stay on her parents' health care plan until she turns 27. Small businesses can get tax breaks to insure their employees. Something most small businesses-- almost every small businessperson I know--want to do is provide decent, affordable health insurance to their employees. They will be better able to do that because of this bill. Also yesterday, because of this legislation, we saw movement toward the doughnut hole being closed. That simply means that senior citizens, conflicted with very high health care costs, having to choose between medication and heating their home or proper food, cutting their pills in half or having to skip a day in taking it because they couldn't afford it--this bill will begin to close that doughnut hole that President Bush and the Republican Congress created. We are seeing major progress which affects individual people. Mary from Ashtabula, OH, which is in the northeast corner of the State, shared a story with me about her friend who is paying $56 each month for medications to treat her chronic illness. After the doughnut hole kicks in, she worries that her friend will have to pay literally 10 times that--not $56, which she can handle, but literally $500 per month, which she can't. This increase will catastrophically affect her friend, who is 80 years old and living on a tight budget. Next year, because of this legislation that is taking effect now, Mary's friend will see her prescription drug costs cut in half. Robert from Cleveland wrote me a letter sharing his concerns about being young and uninsured. As happens to many young adults, Robert was dropped from his mother's insurance on his 21st birthday. He has been unable to obtain full-time employment. He has remained uninsured, not by choice but because he really had no options. In fact, he saw the risks associated with being uninsured firsthand as he accompanied his also uninsured friend to the hospital after sustaining a basketball injury not too long ago. His friend left the emergency room with a $3,000 bill. Robert understands that young adults such as him and his friend will no longer have to face the uncertainty and fear associated with being uninsured. This legislation also, as of yesterday, allows States such as Ohio and every State in the country to set up what are called high-risk insurance pools. We all know--and the Presiding Officer knows it from talking to people in Rochester and Duluth and St. Paul, and I have talked to people in Toledo and Dayton and Springfield who can't get insurance because they have a preexisting condition. So 462 Ohioans already have signed up for what is called this high-risk insurance pool. That means that even with a preexisting condition, those 462 Ohioans have insurance. Six months ago, they were uninsured and uninsurable. Today, they have insurance. Laura from Hamilton County wrote to me when she learned about the health care law. She wrote: I cheered when I learned that children with chronic conditions cannot be denied health insurance coverage. I have a child with Type 1 diabetes. I have worried for years about what will become of him as he ages and moves off our insurance policy. I have worried for years what his health plan options will be. It is a relief to now be able to shift our efforts to battling the disease, not the health care system. Any mother or father with a sick child wants to focus their efforts on taking care of that illness, not fighting with insurance companies, not worrying about cobbling together payments to pay the doctor, the hospital, and the drug company. I am proud to say these changes are just the beginning. As of yesterday, when you renew or purchase a health insurance plan, you don't have to worry about lifetime limits. We know what happens: If you get sick, if you live in Akron or Youngstown and you get very sick and spend a lot of time in the hospital, insurance companies--it is called rescission--will simply cancel your insurance because you exceeded the lifetime limits they set up. Well, no more lifetime limits because of this bill. From now on, recommended preventive services, immunizations, mammograms, and other recommended screenings, will be covered without a copay or deductible. We want people to get screened, to get preventive care. It saves their health, and it saves all of us money. So they can get less expensive health care. For them, taking away their requirement to pay copays and deductibles will make a huge difference. There are now new restrictions on private insurers from placing unreasonable limits on your coverage. Patients can access out-of- network emergency room services and children can no longer be denied insurance because of a preexisting condition. Think of the parents we talk to who have a child who is sick and can't get insurance because that child has a preexisting condition, as if a parent wanted it that way. Now we have fixed this. The Presiding Officer was part of this debate, as all of us in this institution were, during last year and the beginning of this year when we passed this bill. We know what the opponents--people speaking mostly on behalf of the insurance industry, the drug industry, and people who just don't agree that we should do something like this--we know what they did. They lied about death panels. They spread half-truths about costs. They even labeled health care reform ``communism.'' They did the same thing with Medicare. I remember the same arguments when I was a kid. I was 12 years old, 13 years old when Medicare passed. They used the same arguments about Medicare. They said: The government is going to stand between you and your doctor. They said: It is going to turn the United States into the Soviet Union. They said: We are never going to be able to get health insurance again. It is going to be big government running our lives. I don't think they say that about Medicare anymore. They have tried to dismantle and privatize Medicare, but they know it has worked. In the 1930s, these same people with the same philosophy campaigned against Social Security, saying it wouldn't work. In the 1960s, they campaigned against Medicare, saying it wouldn't work. Now they are campaigning against the health care law. There are Republicans all over this country--not many voters, I don't think--who are talking about repealing the health care law. So what they are going to do is kick the 23-year-old off their parents' insurance. Now they are going to take away these tax breaks for small businesses to insure their employees. They are going to reinstate the doughnut hole. They are going to put more costs back on senior citizens, who finally are getting some help with their drug costs. I don't get it. They are going to bring back preexisting conditions. They are going to say it is OK again to deny somebody coverage for a preexisting condition. I don't think the public is going to buy that. I don't think this institution will vote that way. It is important to recognize from where we have come. Most of all, it is important to think about individual human beings we have met who are affected so positively by this law. They are going to be able to get insurance. They are not going to be denied coverage if they have a preexisting condition. Businesses will be able to help their employees by covering them for insurance. Senior citizens are going to get significant help for their drug costs. What is not to like about that? That is why it is important that we stand firm as we mark this 6-month beginning of these changes that will make our health care system work better, be more responsive to people, and, most importantly, take care of individual Americans better than ever before.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 644, submitted earlier today.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I appreciate the comments of Senator Klobuchar, who has been a leader on moving forward on this legislation on food safety. It is so important to our country. I am so sorry that pretty much one obstructionist, or a whole party of obstructionists, unfortunately, have blocked this bill, and one Senator in particular has kept us from moving on this bipartisan bill. It is one of the sad chapters of this Senate that a small minority, again, can block us from doing the things we ought to do in our jobs, what we ought to be doing. I want to talk for a moment about some positive developments in my State. A couple of weeks ago I went to Lordstown, OH. It has a General Motors plant. I believe Governor Strickland was asked to drive the first red Cruze, Chevy Cruze, their highest mileage new car, off the line, followed by a white Cruze and a blue Cruze. You know the symbolism of that and the beauty of that and the inspiration of that in many ways was all about what has happened in the last 18\1/2\ months to the auto industry. I am particularly proud. I do not come to the floor and endorse one particular company ever. I am not doing that. I am proud of this because of what it looked like a year and a half ago. Now, 18 months ago we remember what happened: Barack Obama took the oath of office. The banks had about imploded. We knew the financial system was close to collapse. We knew the auto industry was facing bankruptcy. President Obama took office in the midst of losing 700,000 jobs a months. President Bush was leaving office, having left us--the largest in history at that time--the largest budget deficit in the history of the United States of America. That is what we started with 18\1/2\ months ago. When you think about what it meant in the auto industry--I know my State is considered an auto State. New Mexico may not be, but New Mexico has some number of component manufacturers and a lot of car dealerships. The car dealerships in Taos or Albuquerque or Truth or Consequences or anywhere necessarily in the State are often so involved in the community: helping Little League, helping scholarships, all of the kinds of things the good citizens, especially auto dealers, do. But I think about what this meant. So 18 months ago when this auto industry was about to crash, literally--pardon the pun--what it would have meant in my State, it would have meant tens of thousands of retirees would have possibly lost significant amounts of pension and health care they had as 25-, 30-, 40-year employees of General Motors or Chrysler. We know it would have meant a huge number of lost jobs, thousands of lost jobs, just in the auto companies, let alone all of the suppliers, what are called tier 1 suppliers, tier 2 suppliers, those small companies, small- and medium-sized companies that are suppliers. They are machine shops, tool-and-die makers, stamping plants, all kinds of companies that make components that go into the auto industry, that go into the trucks and the cars. They would have gone out of business. We knew all of this was about to happen. Because of the Recovery Act, and because this government decided, President Obama and the Democrats in the House and Senate--in spite of the naysayers, in spite of the people out there who said: Let the market work; if the auto industry collapses, it is the market speaking. Just let the market work. Let the free market work. If we had listened to them, listened to the naysayers, listened to the people who are the doom-and-gloom crowd, my State would have gone into a depression. We would have lost thousands of auto jobs. Senior citizens relying on those pensions and health care would have been, in many cases, abandoned. The dealerships, the component manufacturers, and the auto company employees themselves would have been out of work. As I said, we did not listen to the conservative politicians and say: Let the market work. We did not listen to the naysayers. We did not listen to the doom-and-gloom crowd who said: It is not our problem. The Federal Government has no business. Well, the fact is, the Federal Government invested in the auto industry. Instead of losing 700,000 jobs a month, as we were when President Obama took office 18, 19 months ago, we are now gaining jobs. We have gained jobs in this country in the private sector for 7 or 8 straight months. Not enough, not even close to what we want to do in New Mexico or Ohio or any other State, but clearly we have seen some good things happen. What has happened in the auto industry is particularly interesting. At this GM plant in Lordstown, right where I was--and I have been there many times, where I was a couple of weeks ago with Governor Strickland--we have seen--there are 4,500 people working in that plant now. They just added 1,100 jobs to do the third shift of the Chevrolet Cruze. But what is particularly great about that, if you are the Senator from Ohio, is in Defiance, OH, western Ohio, near the Indiana border, is where they make the engines for the Chevy Cruze. If you travel northeast of there to a Toledo suburb called Northwood, that is where they make the bumpers for the Chevy Cruze. If you go into the city of Toledo, that is where they make the transmission for the Chevy Cruze. Then you go east to Parma, OH, that is where they stamped most of the components for the Chevy Cruze. Then you drive east to the Youngstown area, Mahoney Valley to Lordstown. They do some of the stamping, and that is where they do the assembly. So hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of new jobs were created--well, thousands--up and down the supply chain, from the most basic bolt, the most basic component in an engine or the most basic component in a car door or anywhere else in that car, to the ultimate assembly in Lordstown. It means thousands of jobs. Again, if we had listened to the doom-and-gloom crowd and the naysayers, it never would have happened. We also need to learn from history. When government is in partnership with the private sector, with private businesses and communities, some pretty good things can happen. Just take this for a moment. For 8 years, January 1993 to January 2001, President Clinton, during his time as President, we saw a 22 million private net increase, 22 million job increase. We also saw wages go up in this country, and President Clinton left us with the largest budget surplus in American history: 22 million jobs, an increase in wages, largest budget surplus in American history. In the next 8 years, January 20, 2001, to January 20 at noon, 2009, those 8 years of President Bush, 1 million jobs increased, 1 million, not even enough to take care of our sons and daughter who have graduated from high school and are entering the workforce, coming out of the Army, coming out of high school, coming out of college, not even enough to absorb the population growth. Wages were actually flat or went down for the great majority of Americans during those 8 years, and President Bush left us with record budget deficits. So 22 million jobs, 1 million jobs, incomes went up, incomes flat and went down, biggest budget surplus in American history, record budget deficit under the Bush years. So if you go back further, you hear the Republicans, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, talk about this philosophy: Cut taxes on the rich, and you cut taxes on corporations, you are going to have job growth. Well, nice try. It is not what happened. After the Ronald Reagan tax cuts for the rich in 1981, the next 16 months we had declining employment in this country, 16 months in a row of lost jobs after this tax cut, which was going to make the economy take off. Fast-forward 1993, President Clinton. He had some tax increases on the wealthiest taxpayers. He also had some budget cuts, and he moved toward a balanced budget. Employment took off--22 million jobs. President Bush, 2001, big tax cuts for the rich in 2001, big tax cuts for the rich in 2003, basically no real significant increase in jobs during those 8 years. Now, the mantra of the Republicans, those who are on the ballot this year and those who sit across the aisle from me, again, is, let's do more tax cuts because that increases jobs. It does not. What increases jobs is investment in education, investment in health care, investment in infrastructure, reducing the deficits--all the things that Republicans pay lipservice to but in the end simply do not deliver on. We have an opportunity next Monday. This coming Monday, we are going to bring a bill to the floor that is the other part of this: How do we create jobs? That is, we are going to begin to finally move to fix some of our tax laws, and then next will be some of our trade laws so that we quit losing so many jobs to China. Mr. President, 30 percent of our GDP in 1980 was manufacturing, almost 30 percent. Now it is down to 11 percent of our gross domestic product. A big part of that is trade policy, which the Presiding Officer opposed when he was in the House of Representatives, PNTR with China and the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and before that, when I was in the House, my first year, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which we opposed. Those trade agreements, coupled with tax law, has encouraged companies to move overseas. Those days have to be behind us. What we are going to do on Monday night is vote on legislation that will begin to turn the corner, will begin to take away those tax incentives for companies to go overseas and replace them with tax incentives for businesses that manufacture in Shelby, OH, and in Ravenna, OH, and Zanesville, Ohio, and all over this country. At the same time, President Obama, the first President in years in either party, is beginning to enforce trade law. We know what that meant in Findlay, OH, when he enforced trade laws with the International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce, on Chinese tires that had been dumped, sold illegally into this country. When President Obama enforced those trade rules against the breaking of the law that the Chinese Government did, immediately we saw several hundred jobs created--100 of them in Findlay, OH--several hundred jobs created all over the country. When the President did the same thing on something called oil country tubular steel--it is the steel, the seamless steel pipes, these tubes that are used for oil and gas drilling--we immediately saw a commitment, an investment, which will result in 400 jobs in Mahoning Valley in northeast Ohio, and a good many jobs in Lorain, OH, a city I lived in for a decade west of Cleveland on Lake Erie. We were able to do that because, finally, it is the Democrats, working with President Obama, who are enforcing trade law and beginning to change tax policy so we see job creation. I do not care where you live in this country. People are just sick and tired of not being able to find American-made products. This is made in China. This is made in India. This is made in Brazil. This is made in Honduras. This is made in Bangladesh. Nothing against those countries, but oftentimes, especially the Chinese, their government is gaming the system. They are not playing fair on trade. We need a whole different trade regimen. We need a whole different tax system so American companies are no longer going to China to find cheap labor, weak environmental rules, unenforced worker safety rules, and can produce and then send it back to America. I think this is the first time since colonial days where the business community, where a lot of large manufacturing companies--and I make the distinction between large and small because small manufacturing companies do not do this but the large manufacturing companies. Ten years ago they came to lobby Congress to pass the permanent normal trade relations with China. Ten years ago this month the Senate, for all intents and purposes, sold out American manufacturing. They passed PNTR, it was called. It used to be called most favored nation status with China. They changed the name because it did not sound very good. Congress passed that 10 years ago. What that has meant is our trade deficit with China has almost tripled in that period of time. What the business community has done, the large companies have done, is this: They lobbied to change the rules. Then they moved production from St. Clairsville, OH, and Portsmouth, OH, and Springfield, OH, to Shanghai and Wuhan and Beijing, and Huang Jo, China, to make those products. Then they sold them back to the United States. I don't think since colonial times that large companies in one country have adopted that kind of business plan where you move production out of your country, make it somewhere else, add all that value to those products, and then sell them back into the home country where the corporation headquarters is located. It doesn't make sense for us. It means far too many lost jobs. I will give an example. There is an industry in which many Ohio companies are involved, the paper industry. There is a specific kind of paper called a glossy paper used in magazines. China didn't have that industry. It is called coated paper. Twelve years ago China did not have a coated paper industry. They began it similar to the last decade when they built wind and solar, clean energy industries, and somehow started to lead the world, as we have unilaterally disarmed. Now they buy most of their pulp in Brazil. So they grow the trees, cut down the trees in Brazil. They ship the wood to Chinese paper mills. They manufacture the coated paper in China. They ship it back to the United States. They underprice American paper companies which buy the wood sometimes within a few miles or a few hundred miles of where they are, which tells me, even though wages are less in China, even though they don't have much enforcement of environmental rules or worker safety rules, they are gaming the system with currency, with subsidies, free land, all the kinds of things the Chinese Communist Government does. Until we enforce trade laws so we play fair and compete, we will continue to lose manufacturing jobs. That is why Monday night is an important first step as this Senate moves forward on dealing with the problem of outsourcing jobs. There are few things we can do in this body more important than beginning to rebuild manufacturing. We know how to make things. My State is the third largest manufacturing State in the country, behind only California and Texas, which are two and three times the size of Ohio in population. We know how to make big and little things. We have the largest ketchup manufacturing plant in the world in Freemont. We have the largest insulation company making fiberglass anywhere in the United States in Newark. We know how to make things in our State. We just need the opportunity, a level playing field, tax law and trade law that puts the United States of America on a level playing field. We know we can compete with anybody. We just need the opportunity. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, just yesterday, the Columbus Dispatch, the second largest paper in my State, reported that one single Cincinnati-based corporation gave more than $450,000 to Karl Rove's outfit. Lest we forget, Karl Rove was the very political person in the Bush administration who was sort of the mastermind of dirty tricks and of raising tons of special interest money and the mastermind on a lot of the sort of, shall we say, disinformation coming out of the White House in the Bush years during the lead-up to the Iraq war--that Karl Rove. Again, the Columbus Dispatch reported that one single Cincinnati-based corporation gave more than $450,000 to Karl Rove's outfit to support advertising for one single Ohio Senate candidate. That was reported from a generally conservative newspaper. The Columbus Dispatch is no friend of Democrats. They are a pretty Republican organization, although the reporters are fairminded. So one corporation sent $450,000 to one single Senate candidate. That corporation can do that because of the Roberts Court decision--the Supreme Court decision, with its new ultraconservative Court, which is perhaps more conservative than any Court in the 21st or 20th centuries, in a case called Citizens United. It is an outright corruption of our democratic process. But with the Citizens United case, it is a reality. The Supreme Court opened the floodgates, allowing multinational, large corporations to bankroll their favorite political candidates and build a Congress in their image. They don't have to be American; they can be foreign corporations. It is not like the drug companies, oil companies, and insurance companies don't have enough power in Washington, DC. When they sneeze, too many people around here get a cold. When the drug companies, insurance companies, and the oil industry--these large corporations--want something, far too often they are successful in the Halls of Congress. That is the reason we have seen the obstruction in the last year and a half. That is why it is so easy for Leader McConnell to get 41 Republicans to oppose what we are trying to do in this body--because of the influence of these drug companies, insurance companies, the oil industry, and others-- these huge companies that outsource jobs. The Supreme Court is made up of almost all conservative appointees--a majority of them--backed by these major moneyed corporate interests, and this Court has given even more power to these corporations. In some cases, they said they can be foreign-based corporations. In Citizens United, the Supreme Court swept aside decades' worth of established jurisprudence to abruptly--and radically--change the rules of the game to remake, if you will, our democratic system. The Roberts Court couched their activism in arguments about the first amendment. I am not a constitutional lawyer; in fact, I am not a lawyer at all. When I hear: Should General Motors or should Pfizer drug company or should any large corporation have the same free speech rights as individual Americans, I don't think so. The Founders never thought about corporations having all the same first amendment free speech rights as individuals, as the pages sitting here do or as Americans in Toledo, Akron, and everywhere do by nature of the fact they are American citizens. They have free speech rights. The Roberts Court decision said we are going to give free speech rights to corporations in every way, which means the free speech of an individual American is washed away, in political terms, because of the huge influence that a small number of corporations can have because they have so much money to inject into the political system. Citizens United, therefore, buries the voices of everyday Americans, as Fortune 500 companies straddle the globe and reap billions in profits, and they can take just pennies on the dollar and lavish huge dollars on American campaigns. If a multibillion-dollar company drops $1 million to help a candidate--as we are seeing with Rove's sort of sordid political operation--that is not very much money to that company. But that $1 million certainly can wash away and so much counteract a bunch of American citizens in Mansfield, Lima, Springfield, and Zanesville, OH, who are giving $20 each. Average households are struggling to break even. How can you compare their ability to influence--ability to exercise their free speech--to that of a multimillion-dollar Fortune 500 company? Look how that plays out. In 2009, corporations spent $3.3 billion lobbying Congress to influence legislation, exerting far more influence on our political process than they should. We saw how special interests spent more than $1 million a day in an attempt to shape health care reform and Wall Street reform, and because of Citizens United they will be able to spend unlimited amounts of money to intimidate, retaliate against, and replace their foes in Congress. If you speak up, as I am doing now at some risk--I am on the ballot in 2012. I know what this crowd is going to do because I do not always agree with BP's agenda or the drug companies' agenda. In fact, I usually do not. I also know these companies already have so much influence lobbying the Congress day after day, and now they are going to have greater influence in electing their allies to the House of Representatives and the Senate. They have turned this advantage into a corporate monopoly of political speech. When campaigns overwhelmingly are run on television now, with millions of dollars spent--at least $10 million will be spent in Ohio in the Senate race, probably more than that in the Governor's race-- when there is that kind of money, it too often drowns out everyday Americans' free speech. Most Americans today do not advocate for, nor would the Framers have envisioned a democratic system in which $10 million contributions from corporations drown out $20 donations that represent real people's real concerns. A lot of people give me $10, $20, or $50 for my campaign. They are not trying to buy influence. They do not buy influence with that. They contribute to me and the Senator from Illinois and others because they agree with what I do. They like the positions I take. They think I represent them reasonably well. But they are not going to influence the system. Contrast that with this more than $400,000 donation to one political candidate from one corporation. What does that suggest might happen down the road? Our democracy was once--I hope still is--on the power of a single person walking into a voting booth and casting a vote. It is based on individual rights, not corporate profits. But the Citizens United case gave corporations the power to put corporate profits squarely ahead of personal rights. That is why the legislation we are working on, the DISCLOSE Act, is so important. I guess that is why Republicans en masse seem to be opposing the DISCLOSE Act. The DISCLOSE Act fights back by giving individual Americans more power to understand, to cast sunlight into the shadows of corporate political spending. It grants citizens power of information-- information that breeds accountability and transparency. If a company engages in political activity, that company should be willing to identify itself--but not the way the Citizens United case is. That means the DISCLOSE Act would make CEOs do what political candidates do when they pay for political advertising. When I ran for office, as I did in 2006 for the Senate, I looked into the camera and said: This ad was paid for by friends of Sherrod Brown, so people would know I am responsible for this ad. Why shouldn't a corporation that writes a check for $1 million to a political organization--why shouldn't that CEO be willing to and be told to and be forced to and be compelled to under law stand in front of the camera and say: This ad was paid for by XYZ Corporation. I take responsibility, and I am the CEO. It helps the public follow the money behind the multimillion dollars that buy ads from shadowy groups. If BP were to give $1 million to a political candidate in Ohio or Pennsylvania and nobody really knows it is a BP ad that has gone into this group, then the voters do not have any way of judging very much from that ad. But if the CEO of BP had to walk out in front of that camera and say: I am the CEO of BP, and I paid for this ad, that is going to send a message to voters: Do I want to support this candidate BP is supporting? But, instead, BP can get behind the desk and hide from disclosure. I have heard people in this body--the Republican leader most prominently--argue ad nauseam on campaign finance laws that we need full disclosure, we need the sunlight to shine. This is his opportunity to step up and argue for full disclosure and go down to that well and cast a vote: Yes, I agree with full disclosure. They are not doing it now. Do you know why? So far, not one Republican has been willing to walk out here and make a CEO say: I am responsible for this ad. My corporation paid for this ad. They are not willing to because Republicans really know that come election time, when multinational corporations are willing to write million-dollar checks, they are going to be the beneficiary--not that my party by a long shot is perfect, but we know that Republican candidates are almost always supported by the biggest multinational, often foreign corporations in this country--the big oil companies, the big insurance companies, the big drug companies--that already have too much power here, but they are going to have more power here because they are spending all this money to elect conservative, Republican, pro- corporate, at-any-cost candidates. What that means is higher taxes for individuals as corporations pay less--less corporate responsibility for deregulation of Wall Street and the environment. Look at what happened to Wall Street in the last 3 years. Look at what happened to the environment with BP. The merry-go-round will continue. The DISCLOSE Act also has a provision that says political decisions cannot be influenced by foreign-owned companies. We are putting a prohibition in this bill that a foreign-owned company cannot come to America and buy elections. I am incredulous that my Republican opponents--who always talk about nationalism, always challenge patriotism of people with whom they do not agree, always are talking about our national interests, always bashing immigrants--would not agree with us that foreign companies ought not be able to come in and buy American elections. I guess that is OK to them too, because our bill says foreign-owned corporations may not participate in American elections in this way. To me, it is bad enough that a company based in the United States-- this is the case where a company that is based in the United States but owned by a European interest can still contribute. That is what the Citizens United case said. We are saying no to that. Think of a U.S.- based, Chinese-owned company spending millions to influence a trade or manufacturing bill. One of the things I fought for--and I know the Presiding Officer agrees with this, and it has been supported--is made-in-America provisions. We have seen in downstate Illinois, in suburban Chicago, in Dayton and Springfield, OH, Cleveland and Toledo, a significant erosion of our manufacturing base. One of the reasons for that is that companies have moved offshore because of bad trade agreements and bad tax law that we are trying to fix even though it has been blocked by the other side. We also know most Americans would love to buy clothes made in the United States, would like to buy products. They go to stores and cannot find products made in the USA. Tell me that a foreign-owned corporation that spends political money, comes in and gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to a conservative political candidate, tell me that corporation is not going to lobby that Member of Congress against some of our made-in-America laws we have tried to enact. You can bet those conservative politicians who love to trumpet their patriotism and accuse others who disagree of not being so patriotic will find a way to oppose strengthening made-in-America rules. If anything should bear the label ``Made in America,'' it should be our elections. I am amazed that Republicans in this body do not agree with that. It used to be that the disclosure of campaign expenditures was bipartisan, Republicans and Democrats. It is bipartisan in the public; it is just not bipartisan here. We should not want to see our democratic system become the puppet of corporate America or any special interest. Transparency matters. People ought to know from where these dollars come. Disclosure matters. Companies should have to disclose and take responsibility for those ads and those contributions. By enabling Americans to see behind the curtain, the DISCLOSE Act ensures Americans will not be left in the dark. The bill restores some of the integrity and the transparency that the Citizens United decision stripped from our political process. Let's not forsake this opportunity. I know it will not affect the tens of millions of dollars Karl Rove and his friends in the Bush administration are spending in campaigns this year, but if we do this bill right, it can affect elections in the future in a positive way so that elections, one, will be made in America; and second, for people who give money, there will be transparency and disclosure so the public knows which corporations are putting how much money into whose campaigns, and it will mean ultimately that corporations take responsibility for the decisions they make and the money they spend in the American political system. It is what the rest of us have to do. CEOs should have to do the same. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank the Senator. I would add that a major manufacturer that leaves from Minneapolis or leaves from Cleveland or from North Dakota is a company that has the resources to do that, and that company has a multitude of component manufacturers in its supply chain and that large company that leaves may be its biggest customer. Perhaps it is a big assembly plant that leaves to go to China. The component manufacturer that sells to that auto assembly plant has all of a sudden lost its biggest customer. It is not big enough to move to China, so it loses 30 percent of its customer base. So it is not just the company that moves and what that does to American workers and companies and communities, it is also those multitude of component manufacturers. In the auto industry, for instance, there are way more people working in the supply chain than there are in the actual assembly plant. So in the wake of a major company moving overseas, we see devastation in the entire supply chain of component manufacturing. I am sure you saw that with Huffy bicycle. There is the manufacturer that made the steel, that stamped the fenders, that made the tires and the spokes that were taken to Huffy--I think to Celina, OH, in those days--to assemble. So all of them lose. In smaller communities, as the Senator knows, a manufacturing plant oftentimes has a husband and wife both working at the same plant, making $12 to $15 an hour. Their whole lives are upended because all of a sudden they have lost both jobs in their family. Thirty years ago, 30 percent of our GDP was in manufacturing and only 11 percent was in financial services. That number has flipped now, and look where it got us. Only 11 percent of our country's GDP is now as a result of making things. We know how to make things in this country, and we are losing that ability. Without a real manufacturing policy-- more than a strategy but a policy--like every other country has, we are going to see a decline in the middle-class long term. I thank the Senator.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Will the Senator yield once again?

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I have been listening with fascination to the Senator's speech because there is nobody who comes to the floor and better explains jobs, trade, trade policy, and tax policy and what it does to our communities and our workers. The Senator mentioned two very well known American companies, and both happen to be from my State--Huffy bicycles and Etch A Sketch, which is a company called Ohio Art in Bryan, OH. That is exactly what happened. Walmart came to Ohio Art and said: We want to sell Etch A Sketch for less money than we are selling it for now. So they had no choice. But let me ask the Senator, it seems to me that there has not been anytime in recent history where U.S. companies have put their business plans together in this way: Instead of manufacturing something, cutting costs, and treating their workers decently and contributing to the community--which American companies have done for generations and is why we have such a strong middle class--it seems that the business plan for so many large American companies is to move their production offshore, obviously getting less expensive labor, avoiding environmental and worker safety rules, and then selling the product-- well, first lobbying Congress to change the rules, as they did with PNTR for China, but moving their production out of the country, offshore, producing it, and then selling it back into the home country. That is a curious business plan that many American companies follow. I hear those companies say to me: Well, we have no choice but to go offshore for the cheapest production because our competitors are doing that, even though they lobbied Congress to help change the rules. I mean, it is a bit cynical but a curious business plan that you leave behind the community that built you up and you move somewhere else and then you sell the products back to the country in which you were founded.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

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

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I wish to mention something else after talking about the, perhaps, Chinese influence on American elections and other countries' influence on American elections and how Republicans do not seem to want to stand up for the American people's first amendment rights and national interests. I wish to talk about something that is more bipartisan, in a sense, and is every bit more disturbing; that is, 10 years ago this month, the Senate sold out American manufacturing. Ten years ago this month, by a vote of 83 to 15, the Senate passed a bill establishing permanent normal trade relations with the People's Republic of China. I remember. I was in the House of Representatives, and I opposed this measure. We were joined by most of the Democrats and a number of Republicans, but we were unable to defeat it. It was a fairly close vote. The proponents of China PNTR came to our office, the people who wanted to give these extra benefits to China. It was initially called most-favored-nation status for China. The supporters thought that did not sound very good, even though we had used that term for years, and called it permanent normal trade relations with China. They put another name on it; they put lipstick on that pig. What the supporters said to us--the CEOs who came to Congress and one at a time talked to us--was that they could not wait to pass PNTR because they would then have access to 1 billion Chinese consumers, so those consumers could purchase American-made products. They wanted access to 1 billion Chinese consumers. It sounded pretty good. As you know, it was not quite the story because as soon as PNTR passed, as soon as they changed the rule, the story became not 1 billion Chinese consumers about whom they were excited, it was 1 billion Chinese workers about whom they were excited. You could see American companies crossing the ocean-- shutting down a plant in Dayton, OH, and moving to China; shutting down a plant in Youngstown, OH, and moving to Shanghai; shutting down a plant in Toledo, OH, and moving to Wuhan; shutting down a plant in Lima, OH, and moving to Beijing or Quang Chau. I think it is the first time since colonial days--maybe ever--the first time when a business plan--get this--when a company's business plan is this: The first thing you do is lobby Congress to change the rules. The second thing you do is start to shut down plants in your home country with your home country's workers, where your entire company was established and grew. You have shut down production in your country. You move several thousand miles away, set up production, understanding that the workers work more cheaply, the workers work for less pay, the country does not have strong environmental rules and has very few protections for workers. They make the product, and then they sell the product back to the home country. This business model, after getting the law changed-- PNTR--10 years ago this month, was to move overseas, make the products there, then sell them back to the original home country. That is bad for the environment, first of all. It is bad for our workers and bad for our communities when a plant shuts down. Look what has happened. We have seen since PNTR passed a 170-percent trade deficit increase in the last 10 years. China continues to undermine free market competition, and it leaves American workers and manufacturers in severe disadvantage. Instead of helping U.S. companies export more products to China, our trade policies have permitted China to manipulate its currency, provide illegal subsidies to Chinese exporters, and artificially price Chinese goods, so U.S. manufacturers have to compete against a flood of cheap imports. Do you know what happens? When I see people supporting this--people talking about small businesses--here is how wrong they are. When a large company leaves Akron or Canton, OH, and pulls up stakes and moves to Mexico or China--a large assembly company, an auto plant, for example--you know what happens to all the small companies and small manufacturers. They don't have the wherewithal or the sophistication to move to China or Mexico so they lose 30 percent of their business--a little tool and die shop in Akron, a little machine shop in Hamilton, OH, whatever--because they have lost their major customer. Look what happens to them and to their workers. So big companies move overseas and all the component manufacturers are out of luck, all because of this trade policy and this tax policy which makes it more attractive for a company and a CEO--well, the CEO doesn't move, he or she still lives here--to move their company to China and then sell back into the United States. Second, our Nation's trade policy--this PNTR bill that passed 10 years ago--sold out American manufacturers and undermined our Nation's ability to lead the world in clean energy. China, which barely had a wind turbine or solar manufacturing presence at all a decade ago, by the end of this year may be making, or close to making, half of all wind turbines and solar panels in the world--in 10 years. And they are not making them--most of them--to sell in China but to export, much of which comes back to the United States. More than 70 percent of the world's clean energy components are manufactured outside the United States. We know how to make things in my State. Ohio is the third biggest manufacturing State. We know how to make things. We invented and developed most of the wind and solar panel technology. In fact, 30 miles from my house is a taxpayer-funded NASA facility that developed the technology we use in wind turbines, most of which is built in China and Spain and other places around the world. Supporters of this China trade policy will make the argument that everything is about exports. I agree, we have to boost our exports, but we have a $226 billion trade deficit per year. That is about $600 million a day. That means $600 million every single day, 7 days a week. It means we buy $600 million more from China than we sell to China. So how do you argue this trade policy is working for us? It means, in essence, that $600 million disappears from our shores every day going to China, and that is not going to work long term for our country when you build up those types of trade deficits. We can do a couple of things about this. First of all, we have to do much better at enforcing trade laws and to revive the Super 301 mechanism that lapsed under the Bush administration that requires the administration to establish enforcement priorities for the most pressing trade barriers, including currency manipulation, restrictive procurement policies, and intellectual property theft. It would ensure that our government helps open foreign markets to U.S. exporters. I am a member of the President's U.S. Export Council. There are about 10 House and Senate Members on this council--both parties, both Houses--and a number of American CEOs are on the council as well. We all want to export more. But as we try to export more, sell more U.S. products abroad, we have to enforce U.S. trade laws so those companies aren't selling things into our country illegally. President Obama has done that, to some degree. He has done more on that than any previous President. He has not done close to enough. He has stepped forward on oil country tubular steel goods, which is the steel pipes that are used for gas and oil drilling. The Chinese were cheating on that. The President made the right trade decision on that, the right enforcement decision. We saw hundreds of new jobs in Mahoning Valley, in northeast Ohio. The President made a similar decision on Chinese tires that were sold in this country illegally. After the President made that decision, 100 people were hired at the Findlay Cooper tire plant in Findlay, OH, in northwest Ohio, and in other places around the State. I would close with this. We hear a lot of talk from both parties about Made in America. What that means is standing up for American workers and manufacturers who are too often undercut by imports made in countries that violate the law. We are just asking to have the law enforced. So my challenge to my colleagues--and to the President--is to ensure American manufacturing grows rather than contracts during the next decade of the 21st century. Thirty years ago, almost a third of our gross domestic product was manufacturing. Today, it is only 11 percent. Thirty years ago, 11 percent of our GDP was financial services. Today, that is 25 percent. So as not to overwhelm people with numbers, we have seen basically a flipping of our national priorities. Think back to 30 years ago: Almost a third of our GDP was manufacturing and only 11 percent financial services. That has flipped. Look where it has gotten us. It has gotten us the financial crisis that almost brought our economy down, if we hadn't stepped in on banking and autos to stabilize the economy. It has also robbed many Americans of a chance to join the middle class, because manufacturing has always been the ticket in this country for working-class men and women to get a chance to work in manufacturing, to buy a decent home in a decent neighborhood, to buy a car and send their kids to school so their kids would have a better life. That is the goal of all of us. I close by saying that I hope we remember the China PNTR. I would hope that maybe we would even invoke some buyer's remorse; that some of my colleagues would come to the Senate floor and want to discuss this and maybe learn from the mistakes of the last 10 years. Maybe we could achieve a truly normal relationship with China. I want a good strong trade relationship with China. I want us to sell products to China. I think we should buy products from China. But I want to do it on a level playing field, with rules that work for the workers in both countries, not just the big corporations that move companies to China, and not just for the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese military, which have benefitted greatly from our trade policy. It is time to learn from the last 10 years and to move forward in a very different way. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 22, 2010, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Electronic Communications Privacy Act: Promoting Security and Protecting Privacy in the Digital Age.''