Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. That is generous of him, and I regret again that earlier, because of the number of Members I had here, I could not yield to him. The gentleman seems to be mixing the issue of the WTO and rules and enforceability with the permanent normal trade relations accession by the United States. There is nothing in the WTO that says that permanent normal trade relations status must be granted before a country can accede. We can recommend and vote for their accession without giving up our right to annually review the actions of the Chinese Government in a host of areas, including conformance with trade agreements, which the gentleman admits they have violated in the past.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio has been very patient. There is only a couple of minutes left, but I understand that the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) would like to yield to him during the next hour. I have another commitment, and I have to leave, but he wants to yield time to someone to debate.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has been most eloquent. I would note that the gentleman from California came on the floor during the debate and asked for time, and I would hope that we could arrange actually a time where Members could share an hour, equally, half an hour or so on either side, to debate, and would hope that can be arranged. I had a number of Members previously waiting on the floor, so I was unable to yield to him. Tomorrow night I would hope that perhaps we might do that, or even some other special procedure. Since the gentleman is Chair of the Committee on Rules, he could make some time available for us to do that. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, if I could add, just to go back to the argument that the gentleman made, after the NAFTA agreement, after they devalued, after the people of Mexico were impoverished, the economists who promoted this and talked about the huge market and the jobs said, ``How could we have predicted this?'' I remember that the gentleman from Michigan predicted it. I predicted it. I only have a bachelor's degree in economics. What is wrong with these people? The same thing could happen with the RMB, so the 20 cents an hour buying power, which is going to be an incredible boon for American industry, is going to drop to 10 cents an hour wages. That is not going to buy a heck of a lot from here. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), who has been very patient.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I have other Members to recognize first.

Mr. DeFAZIO. If I could reclaim my time, just to finish the statement by the chief negotiator, and I thought this was very telling, too, he said during diplomatic negotiations, it is imperative to use beautiful words, for this will lead to success. That is success in negotiations, not success in U.S. access. I sit as the ranking member on the Coast Guard and Maritime Affairs subcommittee, our maritime commission has come to us and said U.S. ships cannot access Chinese ports. It is not tariffs. It is not phytosanitary barriers. It is not environmental concerns. They have a constantly set of mutating unwritten rules for port access. We have ships dispatched from the United States, the few that carry goods back that way, because most all of their deadheading back just to bring Chinese goods here, when they get to a Chinese port, they are told, we are sorry, you must leave, and they say, why, and they say, well, the rules have changed since you left the United States. And they said, could we see the rules, and they said, well, we are we sorry, the rules are not written, but we can assure that those rules do not lie. None of that will change under this agreement. The tariff barriers are meaningless, meaningless, in a command and control Communist Chinese top down state-dominated economy.

Mr. DeFAZIO. If I could reclaim my time, there are some who claim, well, in fact, we have to do this so they can accede to the WTO. In fact, that is patently false. The 1979 agreement guarantees the U.S. and China reciprocity in trade. Of course, they have not followed that agreement, and the WTO would allow under their rules China to accede, if the U.S. supported them, and continue to annually review their performance on a number of issues. To give that up, which we are doing here for all time, I mean, we are giving them everything they could have ever wanted, they could have ever dreamed of. They violated all past agreements, but the beautiful words are that they will do better in the future as their negotiators said. I think it should be performance based. The European Union set an example when Greece and Portugal wanted to accede to the European Union. They did not say, oh, sure come on right in and please, you know, we have some concerns, but if you will promise to fix those things, we will let you in right now full membership. They said, no, we want you to deal with labor conditions, environmental problems and other concerns, low wages in your country, because we are worried about a flood of our manufacturers into your countries. And, in fact, they conditioned their accession, and they said we are going to set benchmarks. You meet the benchmarks; we will bring you along. You meet another benchmark; we will bring you along. And when you finally reach the goal, we will give you full rights. Why could we not do that with China? Will the gentleman tell me?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thought the gentleman from California might yield to the gentleman from Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I think that is an extraordinarily important point, because I remember sitting in your office with Wei Jingsheng and he said, when I was locked up in prison in China with no communication with the outside world, he said, I could assess the state of affairs between the United States of America and the dictators in China. He said, At times I was treated much better in prison, and at other times I was treated much worse. And, of course, my immediate assumption was, well, I guess when we made concessions to the Chinese they treated him better. He said no. He said, in fact, when the United States was confronting the dictators in China, when the United States was taking a stand for the few months that President Clinton said that we were going to link human rights and labor rights to our trade concessions to China, he was treated better, as were other prisoners. But as soon as the U.S. caves in, every time the U.S. caves in, the oppression washes this back.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to speak on the proposed legislation that will be before this House in 2 days on the so-called permanent normal trade relations for China, that is once and for all the United States surrendering any right for the Congress to review the actions of the Government of China in terms of its compliance with past, existing agreements on trade, no matter how unfair; any right to review their actions in the area of human rights; any right to review their actions in the area of nuclear proliferation in dealing with terrorist nations. In fact, we would be writing a blank check for the government of China, a government which has broken every past agreement with the United States. But let us go back a little further. I quote. ``If it seems increasingly likely China embraces a trade regime that permits American firms to enjoy what our Secretary of State terms a fair field and no favor, how much does the United States stand to gain? According to the editorial pages of our most respected newspapers, senior government officials, captains of industry, and numerous other opinion makers, the answer to that question appears to be much more than we can possibly imagine. The chairman of a prominent U.S.-China business group, for example, contends that an accord will incalculably strengthen and stimulate our trade ties. A commercial roundtable claims no other market in the world offers such vast and varied opportunities for the further increase of American exports. Echoing these appraisals, The New York Times declares that it is not our present trade with all Chinese exports, but the right to all that trade with its future increase for which America will become a source of great profit.'' Unfortunately, they were all wrong. The President was McKinley, the year was 1899, and the policy was open door toward China. But let us move ahead to more recent actions in the closed Chinese market. The Chinese are the most unfair trading nation on earth. My colleagues do not have to take that from me. We can go to one of the biggest cheerleaders for this accord, the President's special trade representative, Charlene Barshefsky, whose annual report has detailed that, in fact, the Chinese have a plethora of nonmarket-based exclusions to U.S. and other goods around the world. The President proclaims they will lower their tariffs. Well, guess what, the tariffs are meaningless. That is not how the Chinese keep the goods out of their country. They keep them out with nontariff barriers. So they have given away something that is meaningless. They will no longer levy on tariffs the goods they do not allow to be imported; and the U.S., of course, will lower all its barriers. Now, we are a market-based economy. Lowering our tariffs does mean more Chinese goods will flow into the United States. This is what has happened under the past agreements with China. Perhaps I should turn it over. This is the growth in our trade deficit, the growth in red ink with China. It reached a record last year, and it is projected that if the Chinese live up to the current agreement, which is pending, that in fact this trend will accelerate. And if they do not live up to it, it will grow even more quickly. The loss of jobs will be palpable here in the United States of America. If we use the U.S. International Trade Commission's own model, they say that our trade deficit with China will continue to grow for the next half a century, reaching a peak of $649 billion in 2048, our trade deficit with China would not fall below its current level until 2060. Now, that is if they live up to the agreement. Remember, they have broken every agreement. Now, well, maybe this is different. Well, let us go to a good source, quotes from the Chinese official who negotiated these trade agreements. He is talking about a couple of specific things. He says, in fact, and he is talking about the import of meat and he says, this is a change of wording. This has created a fuss in the United States. People think that China has opened its door wide for import of meat. In fact, this is only a theoretical market opportunity. During diplomatic negotiations, it is imperative to use beautiful words for this to lead to success, the same kind of success that the Chinese have had in the past, every time beautiful words, signing agreements, every time violating the agreements and a dramatic acceleration in the U.S. trade deficit. Now, I have had the farmers from my State, I have had the cattlemen, I have had the wheat farmers, they say, Congressman, what an opportunity for us. The U.S. market is not so great. We need help. We need access to the Chinese market. I said to them, What if you thought that, in fact, the tables were going to be turned, if wheat produced cheaply in China was going to be imported into the United States? They said, Well, no one talked about that. Well, they did not tell the tomato growers in Florida about that when we entered into the NAFTA agreement, either; and they have been wiped out by the cheap tomatoes from Mexico. And, in fact, there is no huge opportunity to import meat into China, as we heard. These are beautiful words to get success in negotiations according to the chief Chinese negotiator. He went on to talk about wheat. ``Some people think there will be a massive amount of smut going into China,'' he is talking about something that grows on wheat, not pornography, ``if we promise to import 7.3 million tons of wheat annually from the United States. This is absolutely wrong. Commitment is just an opportunity for market accession in terms of theory. We may or may not import such an amount of wheat as 7.3 million tons.'' He went on elsewhere to talk about how, in fact, the Chinese have made vast strides in producing and stockpiling wheat and that they fully intend to be major exporters of wheat and other agricultural commodities. And by the U.S. dropping all of its tariff barriers while the command and control, centralized communist economy of China has given us meaningless concessions on trade, those goods will be flooding into the U.S., further hurting our farmers and further impacting other sectors of our economy. What other sectors? Well, we have been told this is a vast opportunity. Remember, a hundred years ago we heard the same thing. We heard it a mere less than a decade ago about Mexico, how Americans were going to get wealthy, they were going to get wealthy by exporting goods to Mexico. No one talked about the fact that the total buying power of the nation of Mexico was less than the State of New Jersey. And in this case no one is talking about the fact that China is less important than Belgium to the United States in terms of exports. And the Chinese have no intention of opening that market because they are a command and control, communist, top-down dictated economy. They are not a market economy, and they will not become; and they are not required to become a market economy under this agreement. Most economists say everything but the military telecommunications, energy industries, along with some parts of the transportation sector will be opened to private competition. State-run monopolies and exports, imports and manufacturing, for example, will be dismantled. That is the promise. The reality is, headline: ``China Car Makers Expect Continued Protection After WTO Entry.'' Beijing Dow Jones. ``China Will Continue to Protect Its Agricultural Industry After Its Expected Entry Into The World Trade Organization.'' And the list goes on. Telecommunications, automobiles, transportation. The Chinese have a huge labor surplus. They are not about to risk the stability of their country by putting those people out of work by more efficient manufacturers here in the United States. This is not about exporting U.S. manufactured goods to China. It is exactly about the same thing that happened in Mexico. It is about making it safe for U.S. manufacturers to move huge sums of capital and manufacturing equipment in the past to Mexico and now to an even cheaper source of labor. Just think of it. They work for one-fifth of the dollar an hour that the Mexicans get paid. There will be endless threats of moving the company to China if they do not get wage concessions here at home. This is not about the buying power of the Chinese people at 20 cents an hour. A person who works in the plant manufacturing Nikes at 20 cents an hour, 6\1/2\ days a week, 12 hours a day could, yeah, it is true, if they took 3 months' wages and got an employee discount, they could buy a pair of Air Maxes. Not too likely, and not even Nike says that. In fact, many multinationals are not mentioning selling. If you go visit their Web sites, it is very instructive. We have all heard talk about this, from their American-based factories to China, which might benefit American workers. Instead, they are carrying on about turning the People's Republic into a low-wage production base. That is what this is all about. Procter & Gamble, they want the low wages. Motorola, they want the low wages. Westinghouse, they are all saying, and they say this openly on their Web sites, they plan to substitute Chinese parts and materials steadily for American-made ones, the ones that they still send to China to put into finished goods. The predictable result is the loss of high-wage American manufacturing jobs. A trend that started with Mexico is going to dramatically accelerate with China. I see a couple of other Members have joined me, and let me go to them in a moment. But let me just go back to can we trust the government of China. We have outstanding numerous trade agreements with the Chinese, most importantly the 1979 Bilateral Accord signed by the government of China and the Government of the United States: Where the contracting parties shall accord each other most favored nation treatment with respect to products originating in or destined for the other country, any advantage, favor, privilege, or immunity they grant to like products originating from any other country or region in all matters regarding. It goes on and on and on. We have this agreement. We do not need to give them these extraordinary new concessions. We do not have to give them a permanent blank check. All we have to do is demand that they live up to an agreement they signed 21 years ago, which they have not lived up to in 21 years, and they have no intention of living up to in the future in addition to the newly phrased, nicely worded, beautifully worded, as the Chinese negotiator says, and successful negotiations they have just had with the United States, which is about to be or they are going to attempt to jam down the throats of this Congress and the American people. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior).

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, those who are watching have to be extraordinarily puzzled by this debate. Now since the year I was born, and as everyone can all see I am getting a little long in the tooth, that has been quite a few years, 1947, the United States has kept secret the amount of money that is spent well and the amount of money that is not spent so well on the intelligence services and agencies of the United States. This certainly could have been a rationale in 1947, the year I was born with the closing of the Iron Curtain, the fear of the Soviet Union and their growth across Europe and around the world; threats that we perceived, but that is history. The Soviet Union has collapsed. We are now confronted with rogue nations and others. Our defense budget, and the gentleman waxed eloquent about how few go to read it, I do not go to read it. Does anyone know why? It is a Catch 22. If I go and read it, I cannot talk about it but if I do not read it then I can talk about it. I will say we are spending $30 billion, $30 billion of hard-earned taxpayer dollars on the intelligence services. Now we had one agency a few years ago that lost $4 billion in bookkeeping. They did not know they had it. Well, they found it again after they were audited; and that money has been reallocated, I guess. I do not know. I have not gone up to check out the secret report. The only reason it is kept secret is to keep it secret from the American people, not from our enemies. This amount of money is more than the gross domestic product of virtually all of our enemies combined. They would be frightened to death if they knew we were spending $30 billion to sneak around in their countries or to look at them from satellites or however else it is we are monitoring their activities. But they do not know that and the gentleman says, well, we would not want them to know how little we are spending. Only $30 billion, only $30 billion? This is extraordinary. The gentleman has not even proposed that we would tell them how much we are going to spend this year, which is more secret. It might be an increase of X percent of X which might be Y. Those who took math can follow that. But we do not know. We really do not know, and they would not know. They would only know what we spent last year. This is an incredibly modest amendment. It will let the taxpayers know how much money we spent last year. We are not going to audit how they spent it. We are not going to audit if they lost billions again like that agency unnamed did a few years ago. We are not going to audit to see if it was well spent, if it was spent on satellites or human information or other secret technologies to monitor every communication around the earth that I am getting a lot of e-mails about in my office. No. We would just know how much money we spent last year on this aggregate budget. I think it would scare the bejesus out of all of our enemies if they knew how much we were spending. They would be really scared. They cannot come near 1/100th of 1 percent of that for their intelligence budget. So let us reveal it. Like the gentleman has proposed, we are only going to reveal it for last year. I would go further. I would actually reveal it for this year. I do not think that would be a problem. In fact, we do have a report which came out, which I left over there, but a report in 1996 where in fact, chaired by the Secretary of Defense and others, the commission said that there would be no harm, no threat possible to our national security to publish this year's and even projected years' numbers. In fact, I believe it would scare our enemies into submission.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, the Pentagon cannot even have their books audited to figure out how they are spending their money. Do my colleagues think the days of $1,000 hammers and screwdrivers and bolts are gone? Wrong. The Pentagon loses ships. They do not know where they are. Yet, they say we cannot restrain spending in this town? They are wrong. Because they have gotten too addicted to Potomac fever. Those are not my words. Those are the words of the chairman of the Republican Committee on the Budget. Now, what we are talking about here is good money after bad. We want the strongest defense possible. We want readiness. We want O&M funded. We want our personnel taken care of. But we do not want precious taxpayer dollars wasted. And they are being wasted. This year financial statements were more untimely than ever, and a record $1.7 trillion of unsupported adjustments were made in preparing these statements. That is the Department of Defense Inspector General Semiannual Report, March 31. Now, defense contractors, the wonderful patriotic folks that they are, returned $984 million they were paid that they were not owed voluntarily. They were not audited. They did not return it because the Pentagon found out they had paid the bills twice, three times, four times, or whatever. They sent back $1 billion voluntarily. And then we got back another $3.6 billion after some minor audits were conducted. Now, my colleagues cannot tell me that this is enhancing our defense or our readiness, and they certainly cannot tell me it is cost- effective and a good use of our taxpayers' dollars. This cut would cause, finally, the bureaucrats and the four-stars down at the Pentagon to begin to pay attention how they spend our tax dollars and to have a more cost-effective and better ready force.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. The economic pundits only question how much of an interest rate increase the Fed will do today. They miss the basic question. Why? Core inflation is about 2 percent, less than it was a year ago. Federal Chief Greenspan spent another sleepless night last night, not because he is worried about the damage the rate increase is going to do to working families, everyone who has to borrow money to buy a house, buy a car and finance major purchases. They will pay billions to finance his crusade. No, he had a sleepless night because he kept looking under the bed and in the closet for the chimera of inflation that does not exist. What is the real agenda? If it is irrational exuberance, raise the margin rates on Wall Street. But maybe the real agenda is that he wants to drive up unemployment and drive down wages. God forbid American workers should get a wage increase. That is the real agenda of the Federal Reserve. It is targeted at the working families of America.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, this does not rely on estimates. It does not rely on estimates that can be phonied up on certifications like the annual certification we see sometimes on trade issues and others. This is hard and fast dollars and cents protection.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. DeFAZIO. In its present form, I am, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, this is an important improvement to the bill and I believe it is something that every Member of the body, no matter which side of the aisle they come from, will want to vote for. This is a motion to recommit, which would immediately report the bill back as amended with this language added. This amendment is quite simple. It assures with no estimates, no nothing else, it assures absolutely 100 percent that the benefits under Social Security, and all of the Medicare trust funds and programs will not be diminished under this legislation. That is certainly the objective of all the supporters of this legislation, and I urge support for this amendment so that there will be no question about the commitment of every single Member of this House of Representatives to our senior citizens and other beneficiaries of these vital programs. Last night, the Committee of the Whole accepted an amendment which purported to give assurances that CARA would not be funded unless the Congressional Budget Office could certify that we would eliminate the national debt by 2013, among others. Of course the Congressional Budget Office has already testified that they cannot project what is going to happen in 2013 and that raised some questions on the floor. A number of Members on those grounds voted against that amendment as mischievous. But they also want to be certain the bill protects Social Security. So I am removing them from that dilemma. I suspect that the vote last night was a vote against ordering a government agency to make a finding it has already declared it cannot make. But again, we want to be absolutely clear here today. The House should speak strongly in passing legislation like CARA, which does mandate spending on high priority programs, but we will not allow this initiative to diminish the benefits to millions of Americans provided by Social Security and all the Medicare programs by one penny. The amendment I am offering, therefore, adds a new title to the bill that makes it crystal clear that expenditures under H.R. 701 will not occur if they would diminish benefit obligations under the Social Security or Medicare programs. I would note, and Members should listen, this is a stronger pro-Social Security and stronger pro-Medicare statement than that adopted last night. It is more accurate. The amendment last night did not include the supplementary medical insurance trust fund, part B of Medicare, which therefore would remain outside the protections of H.R. 701 unless my amendment is adopted. This amendment offers Members the opportunity to be for Social Security and Medicare and CARA. Members do not have to choose. They can be for Social Security 100 percent protected out of the trust funds and Medicare, all of its trust funds 100 percent protected, and they can be for CARA. This is absolutely dispositive language. I do not believe that anyone should have any concern with adopting this stronger language.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, until tonight, Congress, for more than a decade, has diverted much of the money that should have been spent on land and water conservation purposes from offshore oil royalties into virtually every other function of the Federal Government. Tonight that all changes. This is a new commitment by this Congress in a grand bipartisan way to concerns that many of us share about our precious environment, the protection of open spaces, and the extraordinary resources that we have in this country. The administrative costs are unbelievably low. We will hear a lot of distorted things about that later. Less than 2 percent. That is great. And there will be no taking of property without just compensation. We will hear more about that later from those who will allege otherwise. Mr. Chairman, this is a great bill for the States, for the country, for my State, which will get more than $50 million a year to help us take care of our endangered species problems with salmon, salmon restoration, and other preservation of open spaces in a rapidly growing State. This is a great night for the United States Congress and one of those rare nights where I am especially proud to serve here.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce legislation to address the pressing problem of how to safely dispose of the U.S. fleet of obsolete vessels which are threatening to pollute our nation's waterways. Currently, the U.S. Maritime Administration maintains a fleet of vessels located in waterways around the country that are designated for disposal. However, due to limitations under current law and concerns about the conditions under which these ships could be scrapped, these ships remain rotting at anchor with no easy disposal option in sight. My legislation would authorize funding for a ship scrapping pilot program at the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD). The legislation would allow MARAD to pay qualifying U.S. shipyards to scrap its obsolete vessels. Under current law, MARAD is required to make money off of its ship scrapping program. However, because of the considerable expense of scrapping vessels in the U.S., MARAD has had difficulty in selling its obsolete vessels to U.S. shipyards. Until 1994, MARAD sold most of its vessels designated for scrapping to overseas shipyards. Many of these ships ended up in shipyards in India where workers toiled in horrific conditions. A series of articles in the Baltimore Sun in December 1997 highlighted the environmental and worker safety hazards facing the workers who toiled on former U.S. government-owned ships in India. Following the 1997 articles and under pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Congress, MARAD stopped sending its obsolete vessels overseas. MARAD has not sold ships for scrapping overseas since 1994. However, there are few options in the U.S. for scrapping the obsolete ships. Shipyards scrapping vessels in the U.S. must abide by U.S. labor and environmental laws, making it a costly process. However, under MARAD's statutory mandate to maximize financial returns on its obsolete vessels, it must try to sell the ships for scrapping. Meanwhile, MARAD's vessels are in extremely poor condition and pose environmental risks because they contain hazardous substances such as PCBs and asbestos. A recent Department of Transportation Inspector General (IG) report cited these risks to illustrate why MARAD's ship scrapping program needs to be revamped. The IG report recommended changing the law requiring that MARAD maximize financial returns on the sale of its obsolete vessels. ``Environmental dangers associated with MARAD's old, deteriorating ships are very real and increasing daily,'' the IG report stated. ``Some vessels have deteriorated to a point where a hammer can penetrate their hulls.'' It's time to let go of the fantasy that the U.S. government can make money off of its obsolete ships. We should allow MARAD to pay shipyards to do the scrapping in a responsible and safe manner here in the U.S. By allowing MARAD to pay for ship scrapping, MARAD can reduce its inventory of obsolete ships and remove the threat these vessels pose to our waterways. In addition, paying shipyards to do the scrapping work will create secure well paid jobs in a domestic industry in need of new business. And finally, allowing MARAD to pay for ship scrapping, may save money for the U.S. in the long run. In fiscal year 1999, it cost MARAD $5.2 million to maintain its fleet of obsolete vessels. This is only the tip of the iceberg. With no solution for disposing of its ships in sight, MARAD's inventory will continue to grow. The inventory of obsolete vessels has almost doubled over the last two years. It now totals 110 vessels, with 88 designated for scrapping. The U.S. Navy expects to transfer 18 additional vessels to MARAD by the end of fiscal year 2001 alone. As these vessels continue to deteriorate the cost to keep them afloat rises. For example, in 1999, MARAD spent $1 million for an emergency hull repair for one vessel alone. My bill would establish a pilot program, similar to the one launched by the U.S. Navy, to pay qualified U.S. shipyards to scrap its vessels. The bill authorizes $40 million over three years for the program. The government's current options are to send its vessels to overseas shipyards where third world workers toil in unspeakable conditions, or leave them in U.S. harbors where they risk polluting our waters. Unfortunately, without financial incentives like those in my legislation, these ships are not going anywhere. The federal government needs to take responsibility for the environmental hazards and safety risks posed by these vessels. My legislation is a step towards solving this problem.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).