Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, we have debated this amendment before. Actually, this amendment passed the House this fiscal year 1999 but was narrowly defeated on a reconsideration vote after powerful special interests weighed in with howls of protest, false sense, and red herrings. Well, first, let us dispense with the false arguments that we will hear tonight from the gentleman from Texas and others. This is not about public health and safety. Children in school yards will be safe whether or not this amendment passes. It does not go to the issue of wildlife that presents a public health and safety issue. It is not about dusky geese. It is not about brown tree snakes in Hawaii. It is not about airplanes falling from the sky after bird strikes. None of those activities of the Animal Damage Control agency, now called Wildlife Services, would be affected by this amendment. It is not about tuberculosis and deer in the Midwest. We will hear all those things. It is not about that. It is about one thing and one thing only. One specific program that is reserved for private ranching interests in the western United States. A program of subsidies to those ranchers. A program that is not available to any other member of the public who has a particular problem with wildlife on their property. It is only available to the ranchers. It is an ineffective, indiscriminate program shooting, trapping, poisoning wildlife that has been promoted by ADC, which now calls themselves Wildlife Services. And this is, again, unlike their indiscriminate ineffective program, a very specific target, eliminate the $7 million a year subsidy. That would reduce the bill to the funding recommended by the President, which would fully meet all of the obligations to protect public health and safety and other duties of that agency except for the subsidized program which goes on to private ranch lands, benefits Sam Donaldson and others. They have spent millions of dollars on this program, and there are more coyotes today than there were when the program began. They do not understand coyote biology. When they kill the alpha male and female, they end up with more coyotes spread over a wider range, which is exactly what has happened. They have managed to kill people's pets. They have managed to kill, unfortunately, human beings from plane crashes with the aerial gunning program. Nothing in this amendment would prevent those same ranchers, who are subsidized by Federal taxpayers, from hiring someone or doing it themselves by any legal means to protect their livestock. They can do it themselves. Nothing in this amendment would prevent that. But it would say that they no longer will have the luxury of calling for a Federal employee to come upon their land to take care of their private wildlife problems. It will be up to them to pay for it themselves, to hire someone to do it for them. That is the gist of this amendment. It is an amendment of great merit. It has passed the House before, and I recommend Members support it.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw amendment No. 26.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, may I ask, does the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Skeen) intend to pursue his point of order, because in the interest of time, if he does, I will offer a different amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I rise to express my strong concerns about a provision inserted in House Report 106-693, the report to accompany H.R. 4733, the Fiscal Year Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill. This provision, which relates to the Army Corps of Engineers' hopper dredge fleet, was not in the report considered by the House Appropriations Committee and was inserted at the last minute without any public debate. Although I plan to vote in favor of H.R. 4733, I am concerned about the Committee's statement of support for placing the hopper dredge McFarland in ready reserve, which was included in House Report 106-693. Placing the McFarland in ready reserve would be bad public policy and likely mean higher costs to taxpayers. The Committee justifies its support for placing the McFarland in ready reserve on a report recently issued by the Corps touting the success of placing another hopper dredge, the Wheeler, home-ported in Louisiana, in ready reserve in 1996. However, I am dubious about the validity of this report. An earlier draft of the report, prepared at the working level in the New Orleans District, directly contradicts the final report, revised at Corps headquarters, by recommending that the Wheeler be put back in active status and that no other hopper dredge be placed in ready reserve. The draft Wheeler report, authored by the New Orleans District office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers states, ``Based on the findings of this report, there is no other logical recommendation, except for the Secretary [of the Army] to report to Congress that the Dredge Wheeler is needed to be returned to active status and that no other Federal hopper dredges should be placed in ready reserve at this time.'' This is a compelling statement. The earlier, more substantive draft, found that keeping the Wheeler in ready reserve resulted in insufficient response times to meet port dredging needs and higher costs to taxpayers because of a lack of capacity and competitive bids. The final draft makes no mention of any of these problems and makes conclusions and assertions without supplying any supporting data or analysis. The final Corps report is seriously undermined by the substantive conclusions of the draft report. This raises serious questions that need to be fully investigated. The House Committee report should not rely on this final report as a basis for making further changes to the hopper dredge fleet. To remain competitive in world markets, to meet domestic transportation needs, and to serve the fishing industry, Northwest ports and their customers rely on hopper dredges for low-cost and timely completion of dredging projects. Without the McFarland to do needed work on the East Coast, the Northwest dredges might be obligated to meet needs outside the region. Timely availability of dredges to perform both planned and emergency dredging work remains a concern in the Pacific Northwest. Sufficient capacity must be available to conduct the necessary annual dredging at numerous ports during the short dredging season. In addition, emergency dredging is often needed to restore the federal navigation channel to allow commerce to pass. Shoaling can occur rapidly with potentially dangerous impact on export shipping and the sport and commercial fishing fleet. Shippers and ports cannot afford to wait several weeks or even months for dredging while private contractors are engaged and move their dredges to the site of the work, often from long distances. Trade commitments and vessel safety are at risk. At this time, it does not appear that the private dredge industry has sufficient capacity to conduct all the needed dredging work in the Pacific Northwest. Even with expanded capacity, I am also concerned that the low number of private industry bids for work in the Northwest could force dredging costs higher without the availability of the federal dredges. In 1996, an Army's Audit Agency report raised serious questions about private dredge company bidding practices. In 1997, the Corps itself released a study outlining eight options for the future of its hopper dredge fleet. Of these options, the one that showed the lowest cost to the U.S. taxpayers required full active status of the Corps hopper dredge fleet. All the other options, while providing more work for the private industry, meant higher costs to the taxpayer. The federal dredges designed specifically for Corps navigation projects, are uniquely capable of performing the required maintenance dredging work at Northwest coastal ports. The experience of these ports is that when the private dredges have been contracted by the Corps, they have often not performed the work in a manner consistent with the navigation and operational needs of the local port authorities and port users. From reports that reach me from the field, the quality of the dredging work performed by the private dredges is not equal to the level of the federal dredges, resulting in disruption to navigation and port operations. In short, the private dredges have not shown that they can perform the work presently being performed by the federal dredges in the Northwest. For these reasons, it would be imprudent to make changes in the operation of the Corps minimum dredge fleet at this time. I hope that the provisions in the House Report will not be endorsed in the final product of this Congress.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. The gentleman from Illinois just quoted a statement about exports and 15 to 20,000 jobs per $1 billion. Apparently that is true. But unfortunately one cannot just use one side of the equation. One has to get to the net. The net is we ran last year a $271 billion trade deficit which by his math would mean 4,065,000 jobs were lost. We are heading toward more than $300 billion this year, and the administration itself admits with the accession of China our trade deficit with China and PNTR will grow dramatically. So you cannot just use the side of the equation that goes to your argument. It goes both ways. We are running a huge and growing trade deficit because American workers cannot and should not be competing with bonded child labor, with people who work in unsafe conditions, with people who work in factories where they dump the toxic waste out the back door. No, that is not what the U.S. represents, that is not what we want to drive the rest of the world to, and it is not what we should be driving our Nation to. We should be demanding more. This organization was set up basically so it could not be changed. You are going to get Cuba and China and Myanmar and those other great bastions of democracy, workers rights, environmental protections to go along with improvements in the WTO? I think not. But it is working quite well for their oppressive regimes as well as it is working for the giant multinational corporations. It is working as designed. Every once in a while, once every 5 years we will be allowed 2 hours on the floor of the House, if we are still here, to stand up and debate this issue; but we will never see a resolution demanding improvements on the floor of this House, even though dozens of Members have come here and said, it is wrong, it has got to be fixed, we cannot be in this organization unless they fix the dispute resolution, unless they protect the environment, unless they protect workers. If Members really believe that and they cannot bring themselves to vote for the resolution, then I urge them at least to cast a protest vote for reform by voting ``present.''

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, a recent study by the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland found 93 percent of Americans agree with the statement ``Countries that are part of international trade agreements should be required to maintain minimum standards for working conditions.'' Over 80 want to buy products made by children under the age of 15. Seventy-eight percent said labor standards and environmental protections should be part of the agreement. Seventy-four percent said countries should be able to restrict the import of products if they are produced in a way that damages the environment. Seventy-four percent said there should be a moral obligation to ensure foreign workers do not have to work in harsh or unsafe working conditions. Guess what? None of those things are protected by the WTO. None of them are allowed to be protected by the current rules of the WTO by us, by the United States, enforcing those values in trade. We cannot restrict the movement of goods produced under any of those problem conditions by child labor, bonded child labor, in an environmentally destructive manner, on and on. The list goes on. Labor rights. Those are not part of this agreement. The gentleman from Illinois talked about American consumers are benefiting so much. He might have said the newly impoverished American workers that have lost their jobs to unfair foreign trade have more buying power. But, of course, that is absurd. Because, since their wages have dropped dramatically or have been held steady by the fact that we cannot go out and enforce labor rights or higher standards of living through these trade agreements, all we can do is chase the cheapest labor around the world to the bottom, those people, in fact, are not doing so well. We are running huge and growing trade deficits. Under this regime there are so many problems. This is an indiscriminate tool, and I admit that. But we are never allowed to debate this issue on the floor. When we passed it, it was an up or down vote on this huge volume that no one had read. Now we are told we get 2 hours out of the 20 hours we were supposed to have to debate the issue. Again, up or down vote, in or out, trade or no. Well, I would suggest that many of the dozens and dozens of Members who have come to the floor and said there are problems with this, we need to change it, should vote present if they cannot vote no to send their concerns. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the Chair as to who will have the right to close?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Financial Times, senior WTO staffer: ``The WTO is the place where governments collude in private against their domestic pressure groups.'' I would posit that actually the WTO is working very much the way its principal authors intended, and its principal authors were the multinational corporations who want to be unfettered from the restrictions of consumer rights, labor rights, environmental rights and protections. The WTO does have a few standards. It prohibits slave and prison labor. It does not prohibit child labor, bonded child labor. On the environment, it does allow cases to be brought on the issue of the environment. A case can be brought against any nation's environmental laws as not being the least trade restrictive, but there is no mechanism to bring a case for having a lack of environmental laws or a lack of enforcement of environmental laws, if they exist. And then, of course, consumers. Consumers are not part of the equation here, except the buying power they might present. This organization does not allow nations to have the precautionary principle upon which most of our consumer protections and environmental laws are based. It sets new standards that they say are scientifically based and higher than the precautionary principle. We have to prove a substance is harmful before we can prohibit it. Thalidomide would have had to be imported into the United States, under the WTO rules, until it was proven that it was causing horrible birth defects. It was a guess by a person at the FDA that kept it out of this country. They did not have a scientific basis. They were applying the U.S. precautionary principle. They saved tens of thousands of babies from being horribly deformed in this country. But under the WTO we could not do that because we could not prove it before the fact. Now, I would posit that this is working exactly as was intended. People who are well intentioned have stood here and called it a star chamber process and said it needs reform. And I think others who are a little less well intentioned are up here saying, oh, of course, it needs reform. We will go back to the organization. We will go to the members and ask them to reform. We will go to some of the members of the WTO and ask them to put forward reform proposals. I think we are going to ask Cuba to put forward reform proposals. Well, no, maybe not Cuba. How about Myanmar, that great bastion of human rights abuse. No, I do not think Myanmar is going to put them forward. Well, maybe Pakistan. How about the OPEC countries, who are constraining trade to drive up gasoline prices in the United States? I have asked the U.S. to file a complaint at the WTO against them. Our Trade Representative says, oh, no, we cannot do that. Well, I am not sure why we cannot do it. I think they are violating rules of the WTO. Or maybe we just cannot do it because the WTO is really designed to protect corporate multinational interests and the profits of gasoline companies and the oil companies, which are up 400 to 500 percent. People in the Midwest are paying up to almost $3 a gallon, and we cannot do anything about that in the WTO; but we can stick it to consumers, we can stick it to the environment. We cannot protect things we believe in, except the multinational corporations.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, I am puzzled by some of the earlier remarks by the gentleman from Oregon and the gentleman from Illinois. They say, well, we do not have to go along. In fact, we can overturn anything we think is wrong. We reserve our sovereignty. All we have to do is pay for it. Well, what kind of logic is that? If we want to have clean air laws that discriminate against dirty foreign gasoline, we can have them if we want to pay penalties levied against any and all U.S. products exported abroad. There does not have to be any relationship. We can have consumer protection laws. We can have a Buy America. We can purchase any U.S. law we want. All we have to do is pay for it. This is an absurdity on its face. My colleagues are right, constitutionally, we certainly could not give them the right to reach in and overturn our laws, but what we have done is tended to seek tribunals before the WTO with no conflict of interest rules, no intervenors, no outside scrutiny, the authority to give foreign Nations the right to levy fines against any and all U.S. products with no relationship to the complaint. We lose on clean air; they can go after big jet liners. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/4\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the point I am making is, if he is using the time to read the letters, that is one thing. If he is making a unanimous consent and he is not using his time, I will object to reading the letters.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I do not object if the gentleman from Illinois inserts the letters, but if he reads them, I will say he has to claim time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\3/4\ minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller). (Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. We have heard already that this organization only has moral authority, no power to change U.S. laws, they cannot impose any action. That is not true. It is patently not true. If the secret tribunal with no conflict-of- interest rules which does not allow intervenors other than the nation states involved, no interest groups, no one else whose laws or interests might be in jeopardy loses a decision, then the complainant nation can impose penalties on you if you do not change your law. So we are saying, there is no power to change our laws. We can pay to keep them. If we had wanted to continue to protect sea turtles, we could have paid the foreign shrimpers who want to kill sea turtles at the same time they catch shrimp. We could have paid off Venezuela because they wanted to import dirty gasoline if we did not want to allow it to be imported. But no, we changed our laws. Now, for anybody to say that they do not have leverage, that they cannot make us change our laws is patently untrue unless you are adding the little proviso, U.S. taxpayers can pay for our laws. Well, that is not right. There are other problems with this. The gentleman from Maryland talked about how we need to improve the antidumping provisions. The antidumping provisions are on the EEC hit list. The European Economic Community has chosen a number of areas of U.S. laws they are going to appeal in the WTO to try and get binding penalties against the U.S. unless we repeal those laws. They include the restraint of foreign investment in or ownership of businesses relating to national security. National security. So the Chinese could come in and buy up Lockheed Martin. The 1916 anti-U.S. dumping act is in contradiction with the WTO agreement. They intend to file complaints against that. We have a gentleman saying, and I think with great merit, we need to make it stronger, but it is on the target list. If we lose the decision, we have to pay to keep out dumped foreign steel or other goods. The EU is going to go after Buy America provisions. They say those are WTO illegal. Finally, the small business set-aside. It is outrageous the things that are being ceded under this agreement.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding the time. This debate is going to be constrained today in the House. It is being held at an unusually early hour, with little notice to Members, except at 11 o'clock last night; and the debate itself is constrained by this rule to 2 hours, although the legislation which passed this body, a lame duck Congress, I might add, without any amendments allowed, was to have up to 20 hours of debate. This should be an important debate, with the United States running this year probably a $300 billion-plus trade deficit, something that we cannot do forever without dire consequences, although the gentleman from California spoke eloquently earlier about how wonderful it is to import things. Of course, if you import more than you export, you are losing jobs and you are running up a tab with foreign nations, and the U.S. is running up a tab at a record rate, $300 billion a year, probably $80 billion with China this year. We are helping to finance their military expansion and other things that the dictators are doing over there with our addiction to their extraordinarily cheap exports. But there are problems that come with those cheap exports, in addition to the loss of U.S. jobs. But what particularly concerns me here today is the fact that the debate is constrained; it is at an early hour, and this follows a pattern. The original adoption of the legislation that bound the U.S. to the WTO was passed in a lame duck Congress, when the Democrats had just lost the House of Representatives, and it was brought up under extraordinary procedures that allowed no amendment. Luckily, that law has not been renewed, the so-called fast track legislation, allowing a President to negotiate an incredibly complex agreement and then bring it to Congress and say oh, you can't change anything, because if you change it that is the end of it and the U.S. will be an isolationist. That is what we are going to hear again today, you are either for an isolationist or you are for engagement. I am for engagement with the rest of the world and for trading with the rest of the world, but just not under these rules, not under the secretive WTO organization, not under an organization that resolves disputes between parties in secret tribunals. Now, when I first brought this up during the original deliberations under GATT to then Mickey Kantor, the President's special Trade Representative, I said, You know, how can the U.S. bind itself to an organization that will resolve disputes in secret tribunals with no conflict of interest rules, to intervenors, not public scrutiny? How can the U.S. bind itself to that, and they can overturn our laws? He said Oh, you don't understand. They can't overturn our laws. All they can do is fine us in perpetuity if we want to keep our laws. I said, Oh, that is an interesting and subtle distinction. But that is the way it works. And there a list of U.S. laws, thus far ones most people apparently do not care a lot about, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act. But now there is one on the radar screen. They want us to change our tax laws, $4 billion-a-year subsidy. Now the Europeans have won the decision against the United States that would mandate that the United States change its tax laws, a $4 billion-a-year subsidy to the largest corporations in America. Now people are getting a little bit excited about this process, Marine Mammal Act, you know, sea turtles, you know, Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act. It did not register on the radar screen downtown with the Clinton administration. It would be different if we had a Democratic administration, I guess. But when it is a tax break for foreign corporations, now they are pulling out all stops. Of course, the U.S. has had some victories. The U.S. banana growers, wait a minute, we do not grow bananas in the United States. Well, a large political contributor who owns control of the company that grows bananas under U.S. corporate ownership won a major decision against the Europeans, which is decimating the small growers in the Caribbean. The U.S. has forced the Europeans or is now penalizing the Europeans or fining the Europeans for not letting in hormone-laced beef. These are the kinds of decisions we are getting out of the WTO. Now, this process needs to change. Even the President says it needs to change. He wants labor included. He wants environmental things included in the future in the WTO. But, guess what? This organization is not very likely to change. It would require a two-thirds or maybe a three-quarters vote, the rules are not quite clear, to change the charter in those ways, and, as we all noticed, the whole Seattle round fell apart just because the U.S. was asking that we might have a meaningless, nonbinding working group on labor rights or environmental considerations in the future. This organization needs dramatic change. Unfortunately, the only choice we are going to be given here today is not to vote to begin a process of the U.S. pressuring the WTO for change or amending the WTO agreement itself, but an up or down vote under very constrained debate on whether or not the U.S. will be in the WTO. I regret those conditions, and will urge Members to vote for the resolution.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, earlier this year the House voted by an extraordinary vote of 407-1 on the National Wildlife System Improvement Act. We made it clear that wildlife conservation is the singular mission of wildlife refuges. Unfortunately, I believe that the case at the Klamath and Tule Lake wildlife refuge is otherwise. Numerous agricultural leases have been let and will continue to be let and the wildlife refuge has recently renewed the capability of farmers within the basin to use pesticides and herbicides which are considered problematic for salmon and other species. I brought this amendment to the attention of the House in order to highlight this problem. What I would like to do is not take this amendment to a vote this evening if we could agree to go forward with a GAO report on the costs and benefits of the leasing arrangements in that basin and the impacts of the pesticide and herbicide application used by the farmers within the basin.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.