Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, my colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley, has offered a second-degree amendment to the amendment I have pending dealing with our trade laws. This amendment is just fine, as far as I am concerned. I hope everyone will support it. It restates what is already in the underlying bill. It reminds me of those days when, as a young boy, I used to buy magic kits and they would have vanishing ink. You would write it and then you wouldn't see it. There was nothing there. So we have these vanishing ink amendments that mean nothing, say nothing, do nothing. I am for it. We apparently will have an opportunity to vote on the Grassley amendment. I hope we will have side-by-side opportunities to vote on the Grassley amendment that does nothing, and then an amendment that does something, something that stands up for the economic interests of the American people. This is probably one of the only institutions in the entire world in which failure is deemed a success, and the more failure, the more we ought to do of it, according to the philosophy of some here in the Senate. This chart shows our trade deficits, the red ink. This is the record trade deficit of last year, and it is going to be higher now. This is a description of how much we are buying from abroad more than we are selling abroad and, therefore, a description of how many American jobs are being sent abroad. That is what it means. Every single day--today is Thursday--we buy $2 billion more from other countries in goods and services than we sell to other countries. That means every single day someone outside of this country ends up with a $2 billion claim against America, American assets, American securities, American property. Does it matter? To some it doesn't. Some think this is wonderful. They are like hogs in a corncrib; they can't get enough of this. Why? Because as we move American jobs overseas and fire American workers and then hire workers in Bangladesh or Indonesia or China, and pay them 33 cents an hour to make bicycles and trinkets and trousers and shirts and shoes, and send them to the big box retailers in America in Toledo and Los Angeles and Chicago and Fargo, the consumer gets to go in and buy an Etch A Sketch for $9.99 or a shirt for $9.99. What a wonderful thing that is that the consumers get to buy a cheap shirt made in Indonesia or China, a shirt that used to be made by an American worker who got fired. Because we buy all of that merchandise, goods and services from abroad every day, and because China ships $170 billion more of it to our country in 1 year than it buys from our country, it means American jobs are leaving in wholesale numbers. So this is what results, massive trade deficits, getting worse and worse, and nobody seems to care. This body, the White House, the entire Congress seems to sleep through it all. It is kind of a ``Rip Van Winkle'' public policy strategy. Why? Because there is not one person here who is going to lose their job over it. There is not one person wearing suspenders, not one person wearing a blue suit or smoking a cigar who is going to lose their job because jobs are outsourced to Indonesia or China. It is working folks. Bob Wills of the Texas Playboys--I have quoted him often in a song from 1941 which says: The little bee sucks the blossom, the big bee gets the honey. The little guy picks the cotton, the big guy gets the money. So it is all of this red ink for America and jobs moving overseas which is represented as a foundation of injury to American workers and profits to those who can pole-vault over all of those nuances in public policy, such as child labor laws, minimum wages, environmental laws, the right to organize. Well, the small trade amendment I have offered to this bill that caused such an apoplectic seizure yesterday so that we could not continue to vote, that small trade amendment I offered, does the following: It says there is a trade negotiation going on in a place called Doha. Not many have been to Doha. It is not a secret why trade negotiations are held behind closed doors in Doha because if they held them in any major city in the world there would be traffic jams with protesters, people concerned about what this is doing to their jobs. There is a negotiation going on in Doha, and in that negotiation other countries have objected to something we have done in this country. We have something called antidumping laws to try to protect American businesses, American farmers, American workers. If other countries decide, look, we are going to target the American marketplace, there is only one American marketplace on this Earth of ours, we are going to target it because we want to go in and dump products at below cost, destroy the domestic industry, and then we will have the entire market to ourselves in the United States. If they try to do that, it is unfair trade. That is unfair trade. So we have something called antidumping laws that would take action against those countries that try to engage in unfair trade. We also have laws that deal with countervailing duties if a country is deeply subsidizing its product in order to dump it into the U.S. marketplace. So we have protections for American businesses, American workers, American farmers, American ranchers. At the trade negotiation in Doha, other countries are demanding that we get rid of the protections that exist that would prohibit dumping of products into our marketplace. They demand that we get rid of these protections. Our trade negotiators have said, all right, everything is on the table to be negotiated. It should not be, and I do not agree that it should be, and so I have introduced an amendment that says nothing in this act that funds our U.S. trade ambassador's office or the Commerce Department should allow them or can allow them to engage in negotiations that will weaken the basic protections that exist in this country that require trade fairness. The White House has issued a veto notice if my amendment should pass. Curious and strange that a provision that stands up for the economic interests of our country would engender a threatened veto from the White House. The Cato Institute has sent around the following, and they can be counted on, by the way, to provide aggressive support. They have everything except the pompoms to be bona fide cheerleaders. As we get in deeper and deeper trouble, these folks think moral failure represents success. Here is what the Cato Institute says: This amendment--speaking of my amendment--is highly irresponsible, shortsighted, opportunistic, and severely detrimental to the U.S. economic interests and the conduct of U.S. trade and foreign policy. I do not know, but as I read that work, it seems they do not support my amendment. The United States hopes to open foreign agricultural, nonagricultural, and service markets. To achieve those goals, it must be willing to reform its agricultural and antidumping policies. What does that mean? The United States must be willing to reform its policies on antidumping and agricultural policies? Interesting, is it not? This is what the Cato Institute is really saying: We have to get rid of these protections that exist in current law in this country to protect American workers and American business. We have to get rid of that because others do not like it, so let us negotiate it away. If it hurts farmers, so what. I mean, that is the attitude. Talk about elitists. A lot of people throw around the term ``elitists.'' If it hurts farmers and ranchers, so what; just negotiate away the protections that currently exist for farmers and ranchers in international trade, protections incidentally that are seldom implemented because we have trade officials who do not have a will, a backbone, or a nerve. Aside from those anatomical deficiencies, they exist in law. Now we have people who want to negotiate away the basic protections. My colleague has come to the floor to offer a second-degree amendment, the purpose of which is to kill the basic premise of what I am trying to do. The second-degree amendment is interesting, and I was at first thinking curious, but it is not curious because it is simple. It simply restates that which is in current law. It will do nothing to prevent our negotiators from doing what they say they are able to do in the current Doha negotiations, which is to negotiate away the basic protections that exist for our farmers, our ranchers, our businesses, and our workers. The Cato Institute further says: If Senator Dorgan is unhappy with the final text of the Doha agreement, should it come to fruition, he can vote against its passage. Well, one can do that for sure. The only thing one cannot do is they cannot amend it. Why? Because this Congress, with the support of Cato and the President, decided what would be smart for all of us to do is put all of us in a straitjacket and decide beforehand that we will give fast-track trade authority for people to negotiate--in this case in Doha--behind closed doors, in secret, and the product they bring back to this institution will not be able to be amended. We are able to amend almost anything else, including nuclear arms agreements, but trade agreements, no; no, because those are negotiated in secret. And when they come back, they come back under something called fast track. So there are no amendments, even to correct the obvious deficiencies. We have had almost this exact scenario previously. It occurred in 2002, May 14, my birthday, incidentally. We had an amendment on the floor of the Senate by Senator Dayton and Senator Craig, a bipartisan amendment, that would have done essentially the same thing. It said there is no fast-track authority for any trade agreement that comes back in which our negotiators have negotiated away the basic protections, the antidumping laws and so on, that exist for our farmers, ranchers, and businesses. That passed with 61 votes. It was true then that I believe either Senator Grassley or Senator Baucus offered another amendment that was kind of a cover amendment, and that passed 98 to 0 because it did not particularly mean much. It set up objectives but objectives that are similar to a strainer, enough holes so that whatever one wants to put through it goes through it. So Senator Grassley now has a second-degree amendment that says: Let us all agree to that which we previously agreed to that does not do anything. So sign me up. If there is a list, let me be signed up real quick to say: Let me agree to that which was previously agreed to that does nothing. And then we will have a vote on my amendment that says: Let us stand up for the economic interests of this country; let us stand up for the economic interests of businesses and workers and insist to other countries that the right way to do trade is fair trade. If it is not fair, then every country has a right to use its remedies to address and take action against unfair trade. I mentioned yesterday we very seldom take any kind of action under any circumstances. We do not ever take trade action. We did once against Europe recently. We slapped the Europeans with tariffs on truffles, goose liver, and Roquefort cheese. That scared the devil out of the Europeans. This big old strong country decided to take action against Europe. We are going to single out truffles, Roquefort cheese, and goose liver. That is hardly the ``John Wayne'' approach to dealing with what we understand and know to be unfair trade. This represents a crisis. This represents a real problem, and nobody seems to care very much. My amendment is an attempt to prevent further damage in the new negotiations. It is not, as the Cato Institute insists, that I do not believe in trade. I believe in expanded trade. I believe it makes sense to have expanded trade, provided it is fair. I believe trade ought to try to lift other countries up, not press American workers and firms down. Perhaps there will come a time when we will look back and say: Why did we not understand what this meant to our country? Why did we not understand the danger that buying $2 billion a day from abroad more than we send abroad in exports, the danger that portrayed to our economy? Why did we not understand that? Why did we not catch it? Why did somebody not blow the whistle on it? My hometown is 400 people, and we had a whistle similar to a lot of hometowns. We have a fire whistle, but it is also used for other purposes. Every noon, the whistle blew in my hometown. Every day at 6 the fire whistle blew in my hometown. Every day at 10 the whistle blew. We had the fire whistle blowing three times in a town of 400 people. Small towns did that to signal that it is 12. Everybody in town should know it is 12, the fire whistle is blowing. We do not have any signals around here. I would like to see somebody blow a whistle around here at some point. When do you blow the whistle--at a $700 billion, $800 billion, $1 trillion trade deficit in 1 year? We had people doing gymnastic exercises earlier this week because the trade deficit in the past month, I think it was announced last Friday, was only 57-plus-billion dollars in 1 single month, the fifth worst trade deficit in history, and people said: What a great thing that is. It actually improved a little from the month before momentarily. My only point is, I think that those who are content to sleep through what is a growing American crisis do no favors to American workers and American business and certainly do no favors to future economic opportunity in this great country of ours. This country is measured in terms of its wealth, not by what it consumes but rather by what it produces, and if we do not stand up for producers to insist and demand fair trade, yes, ranchers and farmers, manufacturers and businesses, we do not have the strength and backbone to do that, if we are content to let people with tiny, little glasses and big degrees go halfway around the world, behind closed doors, and negotiate in secret trade agreements that continue to give us this kind of performance and move American jobs overseas and undermine American business and undermine American farmers and ranchers, then this Senate and this Congress ought to hang its head. We can do a lot better, and should, and the place to start the first baby step, in my judgment, is to start with two things: Vote for the Grassley second-degree amendment that says we agree with which we have previously agreed and want to vote yes for something that does nothing, but it does not harm anything, so we will all vote yes and then vote for the amendment that I have offered--it has been now pending for almost a week--that does stand up for this country's economic interests. It does not impede fair trade or free trade. It demands and insists that we have the right to protect ourselves when others will use trade practices to injure our country, our workers, our manufacturers, our farmers, our ranchers. So we will vote at some point and my hope is that those who feel as I do will support the amendment I have offered for the reasons I have described. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have spoken previously on this amendment. I will not prolong the debate. This amendment is very simple. It says that our negotiators, in negotiating a new trade round, shall not be allowed to negotiate the weakening of the basic protections in our trade law, antidumping laws, countervailing duties, the protections that protect American ranchers and farmers and businesses and workers. We must stand up for the economic interests of this country. The reason this amendment is necessary is because it has been widely announced that our negotiators are prepared to agree with others to lay on the table the weakening of our basic protections, such as antidumping laws and countervailing duties. That would injure this country, move more jobs outside of this country, hurt farmers, ranchers, businesses, and workers. I hope support for this amendment will send a very strong signal to those who are negotiating these trade treaties.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, is it in order at this point for me to engage in a short discussion of an amendment that I have pending?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me take the 5 minutes now. I know people are trying to put together unanimous consent requests. I indicated I would take just a few minutes to describe the amendment I have offered, which I hope will be voted on at 12:30. They are discussing a consent agreement by which they might vote on the amendment I have offered and I believe the amendment that Senator Clinton has offered. Even though the unanimous consent agreement has not been entered yet, let me at least describe the amendment I have offered. The amendment I have offered is an amendment that I offered to the armed services bill, the Defense authorization bill that came to the floor of the Senate and was on the floor for some while. This amendment is pending on the Defense authorization bill, but the Defense authorization bill has been taken off the floor and it appears it will not come back to the Senate, and therefore I will not get a vote on this amendment. So I offer the amendment to the appropriations bill, understanding this is not the optimum place to do this. I will have to suspend the rules to accomplish it. But let me describe what it is. We are spending billions and billions of dollars on reconstruction in Iraq. I will read some headlines. Let me say at the start, the minute anyone comes to this floor and mentions the word ``Halliburton,'' they think it is partisan, political, going after the Vice President of the United States. It is not. It is true he was the CEO of Halliburton, but that was long before he reentered public service as Vice President, and none of this has happened under his watch. This has nothing to do with the Vice President. What it does have something to do with is large, no-bid contracts given to a very large company, large no-bid contracts with virtually no oversight and a substantial waste of the taxpayers' money. Let me read some headlines. Houston Chronicle, February 3, 2004: Uncle Sam Looks Into Meal Bills; Halliburton Refunds $27 Million as a Result. Houston Chronicle, February 4, 2004: Halliburton Faces Criminal Investigation: Pentagon Proving Alleged Overcharges for Iraq Fuel. Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2004: Ex-Halliburton Workers Allege Rampant Waste: They Say the Firm Makes No Effort to Control Costs. May 18, 2004, Houston Chronical: U.S. Questions More Halliburton Meal Charges. July 27, 2004, Houston Chronicle: Millions in U.S. Property Lost in Iraq, Reports Say; Halliburton Claims Figures Only ``Projections.'' The Los Angeles Times, August 12, 2004: Halliburton Is Unable to Prove $1.8 Billion in Work, Pentagon Says. Is anybody investigating this? No. This is a company that charges for 42,000 meals served in Iraq, and it turns out they are serving 14,000 meals to soldiers. We are paying for 42,000 meals. Does anybody care? Overcharges for fuel? These are big, no-bid contracts. And oh, by the way, the courageous woman in the Pentagon, Bonnatine Greenhouse, the highest civilian in the Corps of Engineers responsible for making sure these contracts are handled the right way, is the one who objected to these contracts saying it was, in effect, a good old boys club giving contracts to their friends. Guess what. This woman, who received excellent reviews all of her career and rose to become the highest ranking civilian officials in the Corps of Engineers, has been demoted. Why? Because she had the courage to speak up and speak out. Nobody is investigating the rampant misuse of funds and waste of funds in these no-bid contracts. There should be oversight hearings in the Congress, but there are not. There is not an oversight hearing held on these issues, so I have chaired Democratic Policy hearings, and let me tell you a couple of things we have heard. How about brand new trucks, $85,000 trucks. Drive one down the road in Iraq and get a flat tire and what do you do with it? Abandon it. It gets torched. A brand new truck. If it has a fuel pump that is plugged, what do you do with it? Abandon it. It doesn't matter--no-bid contracts. It is all taxpayers' money. It is unbelievable what we have uncovered. Serving food to soldiers with date stamps that have long since expired and the supervisors say it doesn't matter: Serve them anyway. They order towels. The guy who worked for the Halliburton company as the purchaser said he was told you can't just order towels for soldiers that are just towels; you need to put a logo on the towels. So you put the company logo on the towels, and you double the price of the towels that go to soldiers, so you have the company logo on the towel. It is unbelievable waste, fraud, and abuse. It is not millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, it is billions dollars, and nobody is minding the store. Nobody cares. Some years ago, in 1941, Harry Truman stood in this Chamber, and he said there is rampant waste, fraud, and abuse going on in military contracting, and we ought to get to the bottom of it. He was relentless. He was a Democrat here in this Chamber, and we had a Democrat in the White House. It didn't matter. I am sure that was kind of an uncomfortable thing; it didn't matter. They set up a Truman committee, a special committee that uncovered massive amounts of waste, fraud, and abuse. In this case, we know it is happening. We have direct testimony it is happening with big, no-bid contracts--particularly with Halliburton, but there are others as well--and nobody seems to care. Nobody seems to care. I propose that we create a type of Truman committee, of the type we have had previously, that starts taking a good look at waste, fraud, and abuse that is occurring. Whenever you give massive quantities of money on a no-bid contract and say go ahead and spend, you are going to have this waste, fraud, and abuse. There are stories about someone saying: Let's air-condition that building in Iraq. We will buy some air-conditioners through this reconstruction funding, and then it goes from a contractor to another subcontractor to a sub, and pretty soon the job is done, you have a ceiling fan, and the American taxpayer has paid for air-conditioning. It is unbelievable, and it is going on all the time. My proposal is very simple. When American taxpayers' money is doled out in such enormous quantities--billions of dollars--somebody ought to watch the store. I held up a poster the other day of stacks of 100-dollar bills which were wrapped in Saran Wrap--stacked in big piles because the contracting officer, who testified at the committee which I chaired, said that is the way it was. We said to the contracting companies: Bring cash and bring a bag. We do business in cash. He said: We used to actually play football with these stacks of 100-dollar bills with Saran Wrap. You could actually throw them back and forth across the room. They were paying for the ministries, among other things, in Iraq during the Coalition Provisional Authority, which was us, by the way. They were paying one Iraqi ministry for 8,206 security guards on duty-- paying 2,206 of them salaries--and there were only 602. Does anybody care? Does anybody care about this? Will this Congress finally do what it is required to do--to require accountability for the expenditure of the taxpayers' money? We have spent a massive amount of money dealing with contracting in Iraq for reconstruction. What we are finding is that the few people who had the courage to blow the whistle about favorite contracts--no-bid contracts--having contractors even in the room, in the meeting, when they were with talking about what the specs of the contract should be. Bunnatine Greenhouse, a young African-American woman who rose to the top, the highest civilian job in the Corps of Engineers, blew the whistle on this old boys network that was doling out that money to private contractors, she is going to pay for it with her job, we are told. Shame on them. This Congress ought to have the courage to stand up on the side of the taxpayers and say: If we are spending taxpayers' money, the taxpayers ought to get full value for it. We ought to put an end to waste, fraud and because. When Harry Truman got to the White House, he had a sign on his desk that said ``The Buck Stops Here.'' For accountability on this sort of thing, the buck doesn't stop anywhere. Nobody wants to look them square in the eye. It is time for Congress to look truth in the eye and understand what is happening. My amendment is the first opportunity to do that. I regret that we didn't have a vote on it on the Defense authorization bill. That is where it should have been. I offered it on the authorization bill. The bill has been pulled from the calendar and from the floor and apparently will not come back. I will offer it today and to other appropriations bills. It is uncomfortable, I suppose, for those who do not want to vote against this, but they are going to have to keep voting against it until at some point there will be sufficient votes in this Chamber to do what is right. To do what is right is to follow the model of Harry Truman. Even when there was a Democrat in the White House, a Democrat said: We insist, we demand, accountability on behalf of the American taxpayers, and we are going to put an end to waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayers' money. It is very simple. This is not a complex amendment. It is the simplest of amendments and the simplest of choices. In this Chamber--the Chamber of the Senate--we don't do very complicated things. Every single choice that we make every day on this floor is either yes or no. There is no maybe, no later; it is when it comes time to vote yes or no. That, it seems to me, is an enormously simple choice with respect to an amendment that is this persuasive. I hope the Senate, when it votes midday today on this amendment, will do the right thing. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Clinton, pursuant to the notice she properly filed, I move to suspend the rules with respect to amendment No. 1660, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are on the Commerce-Justice appropriations bill. My understanding is there are a number of amendments left, one of which is the amendment I have offered. It is an amendment that is germane, an amendment I expect to have a vote on. I know that amendment has caused quite a lot of consternation on the floor of the Senate in recent hours, also in the Washington Post, and now in a letter from two members of the President's Cabinet, on behalf of the President, suggesting that were this amendment to come to his desk in a piece of legislation, they would recommend a veto. This is about trade issues and about whether we are finally, as a country, going to stand up for this country's economic interests. I only take the floor again to urge those who do not want to have a vote on this amendment to relent. We have a right to have a vote. I properly offered this amendment, and I would expect a vote before the day is out. The vote is very simple. It is an amendment that says no funding in this appropriations bill can be used by the Commerce Department or the trade ambassador's office to negotiate a trade treaty that reduces or eliminates the protections that we have in this country to protect domestic producers against unfair trade. I have mentioned before that some years ago I drove to the Canadian border one day with a man named Earl Jensen. Earl had a 12-year-old, 2- ton orange truck. We drove to the Canadian border with some durum wheat. We got to the Canadian border and we were stopped. They said: You can't take American durum wheat into Canada. They stopped us. On the way to the Canadian border, we saw 18-wheelers hauling Canadian wheat into our country. We saw truck after truck after truck bringing Canadian wheat across the border into our country, and we couldn't get a little old 12-year-old orange truck into Canada with about 150 bushels of durum wheat. What was happening was the Canadian Wheat Board--which is a sanctioned monopoly by the Government, which would be illegal in this country--was selling all that wheat into our country at secret prices, undercutting American farmers, engaging in unfair trade, taking money straight out of the pockets of American farmers with unfair trade. You could not do anything about it. We demanded of the Canadian Wheat Board all of the information--the materials, the data--that defined their sales that they were making at secret prices. We sent the Government Accounting Office, the GAO, up to the Canadian Wheat Board. They thumbed their nose at us and said: We don't intend to give you any of that information. We don't intend to do anything that gives you information. Go fly a kite, they said. So year after year after year that unfair trade existed, until finally an action was filed against the Canadians, and some countervailing duties were levied against that wheat coming in as unfair trade. Well, that countervailing duty represents a protection we have in our country for farmers, yes, for businesses, for industries-- protection against unfair trade by other countries that attempt to destroy a business or destroy an industry in our country by sending in products that are deeply subsidized or sold at dumped prices in order to injure this country's economy or injure an industry in this country. We have laws against that. The laws are antidumping laws and countervailing duty laws. We have laws that would prohibit another country from targeting our country with unfair trade. We have a right to stand up for our interests and say: You can't do that. That is what these laws are about--countervailing duty laws and antidumping laws. But now there is a new set of trade negotiations occurring in Doha, halfway around the world. They are occurring in secret, and our country is involved in them. Our country has indicated, at the demand of other countries, that we will get rid of our protections, such as countervailing duties and antidumping laws. Our country said: OK, we'll negotiate some changes in that. Let me read what this morning's Washington Post has to say. It says: The Bush administration agreed to negotiations on U.S. anti-dumping and countervailing duty laws when the latest round of world trade talks was launched in 2001. Many other countries view the measures as an unfair trade barrier and want to discipline U.S. ability to use them. In other words, other countries are saying it is unfair we have antidumping laws in this country. It is unfair that we have laws that prohibit other countries from dumping their products in this country at far below the cost in a way that would endanger U.S. industries and businesses and workers. It is unfair, they say. So they want to negotiate an end to those few things left in our trade laws that allow us to protect our own economic interests. The administration, involved in the Doha talks, has said they would agree to put all of these things on the table to potentially negotiate away our antidumping laws and countervailing duty laws. Rather than the $2 language of trade, another way to describe it is to talk about what it means to this country and to its workers and businesses. As you know, I have talked at great length about the number of companies that have outsourced their jobs, told their American workers: We don't need you any longer, don't want you, because your jobs are gone. They are now in China or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka or Indonesia or any number of other countries where we can hire people for pennies on the dollar and not have to worry about all the nuisances that exist in this country with respect to child labor and safe workplaces and the ability of workers to organize and form a union, and so on. So as companies increasingly move their jobs offshore to other countries, we are engaged more and more in unfair trade practices against our country, and our trade negotiators are willing to negotiate away the last vestiges of protection we have. From the Washington Post: The Bush administration urged the Senate on Tuesday to reject an amendment they said would cripple chances of reaching a new World Trade Agreement. The measure . . . is aimed at preventing U.S. trade negotiators from agreeing to change any laws that allow the United States to impose duties against unfairly priced or subsidized imports. The trade ambassador says: We strongly urge the Senate to reject this unwise amendment. The provision would ``provide our trading partners an excuse to refuse to negotiate on sectors and subjects they consider sensitive'' and greatly diminish our chances of reaching an ambitious world trade deal. I am not particularly interested in anybody reaching a deal if the deal is not fair to this country. The objective of negotiating is not to negotiate a deal, if a deal is not fair to us. It doesn't matter whether you are talking about GATT, United States-Canada, NAFTA, CAFTA, at the end of the day, our trade negotiations in the last 25 years have left this country in a weaker position and have put this country in a position where our jobs are leaving this country. I am not interested in a trade deal unless it represents this country's best interests. It is time for this country to understand that trade agreements must be mutually beneficial. This week, to a giant yawn in the Senate Chamber, there was an announcement that we had the fifth highest trade deficit in the history of our country. It was only $58 billion for a month. Did that create a traffic jam for people to come to the Chamber to say: Maybe we ought to stare truth in the eye and deal with this issue? No. It wouldn't interrupt any naps around here. Nobody cares about trade. Nobody cares about jobs. Nobody wearing blue suits is going to lose their job because politicians don't get outsourced; it is just workers. They are the ones who come home and say: Honey, I lost my job. I worked there 20 years and did a great job, but they have told me my job is now going to India. And by the way, I am going to train the person in India that works my job because they are bringing them over to get training from me. Then I am done. My only purpose for offering this amendment is to say that at some point this country might want to stand up for its own economic interests, for its farmers, businessmen, and workers. It has not done that. I am anxious to have a discussion about how anybody in this Chamber thinks it advances our interests to go to Doha and, in secret, negotiate an agreement that would weaken the protections we have for our producers to require competition in trade be fair. I wish to have a discussion or a debate with anybody in the Senate who thinks that is a good deal for this country. I don't know. Maybe we have become immune to the news when in a month our trade deficit is $57 billion, $59 billion, $55 billion. Our trade deficit with China alone in a month is $16, $17, $18 billion. Every single day we buy $2 billion more from abroad than we send abroad, 365 days a year. You can make a case, if you are an economist with real tiny glasses and not much breadth of thought, that the budget deficit and our budget is what we owe to ourselves. You can make that case. You cannot make a similar case with respect to the trade deficit. That is a deficit that we owe to others outside of this country. Those are claims against American assets. It is what Warren Buffett, a businessman I hugely admire, calls creating an economy of sharecroppers. It is fascinating to me that somehow we are told there is a doctrine of comparative advantage with respect to the Chinese, which is our largest trading partner in terms of the deficit. We have a huge deficit with China that is likely now to reach close to $200 billion in 1 year. What is the comparative advantage? Is it a natural economic advantage such as the Portuguese and English trading wool or wine? No. The advantage is, you can hire somebody for 33 cents an hour, work them 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. If they complain, you can throw them in jail. And if they try to form a labor union, you can fire them first, then throw them in prison. That is the advantage. The advantage is borne on the backs of workers. We are not exporting enough product because we are importing $2 billion a day more than we are exporting. What we are exporting is misery, the misery of people who are working in circumstances where they don't have a voice. They are fired if they attempt to form a labor union. They work in unsafe plants. They work 7 days a week and they are paid pennies an hour. That is the export of misery. I didn't intend to speak at great length about this. The administration has written a letter saying, through Rob Portman, trade ambassador, and Carlos Gutierrez, the Secretary of Commerce: We and other senior advisors will recommend to the President that he veto this legislation if the Dorgan amendment were included. God forbid that we should include an amendment that stands up for this country's economic interests. All of these folks have painted these wonderful mosaics with respect to trade agreements, whether it is CAFTA or any of the others. After each single trade agreement, our trade deficit has increased, and the number of American jobs lost, the number of American jobs moving overseas has increased. You would think at some point just by chance the Congress would decide, this doesn't make any sense. At some point when you see things don't work, you probably decide you might want to reevaluate them. Not this Congress. In fact, if something is not working, this Congress says: Let's do a lot more of it. It is like the old story about the guy hauling coal. He is losing money so he starts hauling a lot more coal. That is the attitude of this Congress: It doesn't matter, $700 billion a year in deficits. Let's do some more. Let's send our guy to Doha. It is interesting. Why do you think trade negotiations are going on in Doha? Why not London or Paris or New York? Why in Doha in secret? Because if they had these trade negotiations in London, Paris or New York, the streets would be jammed with protesters. So they go to Doha and have a negotiation that is in secret, and they come back and tell us--with fast track, so that you can't offer any amendments--here is what we negotiated behind that closed door. Like it or lump it; you can't change it. This is now a new world order. It is going to affect our country in a lot of ways. It won't affect anybody wearing blue serge suits, just workers. If workers lose their jobs and those jobs are sent overseas, that is part of the advancement of an enlightened economy. This is not enlightenment, not after you work for 100 years, to decide that you want to create a standard by which people can live well, work, get paid a decent wage, work in a safe workplace, have job protection, the ability to organize, and then negotiate all of that away which is exactly what is happening. I mentioned yesterday James Fyler. I probably shouldn't have said: James Fyler died of lead poisoning. He was shot 55 times. James Fyler was a labor organizer, and he lost his life for trying to organize for rights of workers. That was in 1914. Over a long period of time, we finally made progress and decided there are conditions of production with respect to the environment and workers and other things that make sense. And now all of a sudden, once we have established those rules, you can avoid all those rules as a company by pole-vaulting over them to India or China and deciding: That is where I am producing because I don't have to put up with all this nuisance such as not being able to hire kids or having to pay a livable wage or having to put up with workers that want to organize with respect to workers' rights. I mentioned yesterday how much I admired liked Lech Walesa. He was the fellow in Poland who took down a Communist Government, leading workers' rights strikes in the country of Poland. We deeply admired him. Maybe we ought to stand up for similar issues in other parts of the world on economic matters. Maybe once we ought to decide that our real role is to bring others up, not push us down. That is why I offer this amendment. I know there are plenty of people who feel very strongly that I am dead wrong about this, but they are not supported by the facts. All of the evidence is opposed to it working. There isn't anyone who can come to this heir argument that the current trade strategy is floor and tell me that a strategy that produces $700 billion a year in trade deficits, $2 billion a day in trade deficits, somehow works to the advantage of this country. It does not. It weakens America. We will not long remain a world economic power unless we have a strong manufacturing base and decide to stand up for the standards we fought for, for a century, that created a broad middle class that represented the purchasing power to move America forward. That is what so many forget. Mr. President, I wish to make one other point. The amendment is nearly identical to the amendment offered by Senator Dayton and Senator Craig when we had fast track before the Senate, and it received 61 votes. It passed the Senate, though it was dropped in conference. That is why I assume they do not want to vote on this amendment today. They worry they will lose the vote in the Senate. My hope is they will understand that I have timely filed this amendment. It is germane. I have a right to a vote. I insist on a vote. And I believe it is the only conceivable way we can finally begin to change this country's trade policies and tell trade negotiators they cannot get into an airplane, fly halfway around the world, shut the door of the room in which they are going to negotiate, and negotiate away protections of American businesses and workers who demand fair trade. They cannot do that. We will not allow them to do that. I say to the leadership on the other side, I hope they will now come back and have a vote on my amendment this afternoon. Win or lose, I feel passionately that this country needs to speak about this issue and do so in support of this country's economic interests. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I know my colleague from Arkansas is intending to seek recognition in a moment. I wanted to ask the manager and ranking member of the subcommittee, I offered the amendment that deals with trade and weakening of trade remedies. I offered that previously, and I am wondering where that might exist with respect to the vote we might have this evening. I know the manager wants to finish the bill. I want to be helpful in doing that, but I think my amendment is germane. It has been offered. I have debated it. I wonder what we might expect with respect to a vote.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alabama. I believe the amendment is germane. I have debated it, and I hope we can find a way to have a vote on that amendment. It is a very important amendment with great merit. My expectation is we ought to proceed. I thank the Senator, and I will look forward to having the opportunity to have this vote. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, pursuant to the notice properly filed, I move to suspend the rule with respect to amendment No. 1670, and I ask for the yeas and nays. I also ask unanimous consent that Senator Durbin be added as a cosponsor of that amendment.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I come to the floor to make a brief statement on something I know the majority leader and also the Democratic leader, Senator Reid, have been speaking about in recent days, and that is the issue of the creation of an independent commission to evaluate exactly what kind of preparedness exists in this country and to evaluate this country's response to a natural disaster or to a terrorist attack. It is important, it seems to me, in this case, to stare truth in the eye. We don't do that with fiscal policy. We don't stare truth in the eye with respect to trade policy. Both have the highest deficits in the history of the country at this point. There are many areas where we try to ignore what is going on, and we do so successfully, regrettably, much to the detriment of the future of this country. The question of what we do with disaster relief and disaster preparedness, preparedness to try to deal with a terrorist attack, is a different issue. I noticed today in the newspapers and on television, the folks in New Orleans are beginning to clean up. Even as there remains the search for bodies and survivors, and so on, there are folks out sweeping the sidewalks in front of businesses, those businesses that have not been inundated with water. There are folks hauling away trash. There is a resiliency, a spirit that is irrepressible. Already people are starting to talk about their future, to clean up. So must we. So must we clean up and begin to repair. None of this discussion should ever be about Republicans or Democrats. It is about success or failure. All of us looking truth in the eye must understand that the response by this country to what happened in the Gulf was a failure. Whose failure? I don't know. Perhaps the failure of all of us: Congress, the President, State and local officials--perhaps all of us. But I believe we ought to get to the bottom of it and evaluate how we change that which failed so miserably. When you wake up this morning to the news that 34 people were left to die in a nursing home--yes, in the United States of America 34 people were left to die in a nursing home at the advent of an oncoming hurricane and breached dike and flood--you ask the question, Is this really the United States? What on Earth could have happened? We need to find out. I know some of the Members of Congress have talked about creating a special committee in Congress to look at it. All right. It doesn't substitute for an independent commission, in my judgment. The President talked about his investigation, and, that is fine. What we need, most of all--what we did with respect to 9/11 is an independent commission with the kind of authority and power to get to the bottom of what happened. Why? Because if we do not fix what went wrong and make it right, we will remain unprepared in the advent of a terrorist attack or another natural disaster. This was, we think, the worst natural disaster in this country's history. It can happen again. But we know terrorists will want to commit a terrorist attack in this country. We know there are thousands of nuclear weapons that exist in this world. We know there are people worried about terrorists acquiring a nuclear weapon, detonating it in a trunk in a rusty Yugo sitting on a dock in one of America's major cities. What kind of response, what kind of disaster preparedness exists to deal with a terrorist attack? I know why there are some who do not like independent commissions: you can't control them. You can't control information. You can't control direction. You lose control with an independent commission. But we need an independent commission to investigate exactly what has happened, what went wrong at all levels, and try to evaluate how we put together a process that really does work, that represents the best of this country. We know this country works. It has great ingenuity, great capability, but something happened that went wrong in a very significant way. This was a mess. It is not about blame, it is about accountability. Who is accountable? How are they accountable? How do we make them accountable? So I believe we have a desperate need at this point to move quickly to put together an independent commission that can begin putting the pieces together. Even as the folks in New Orleans begin putting their city back together and cleaning up, so, too, should the President and Congress begin putting this together and cleaning up and evaluating it through the best work of some of the best minds in our country, some of the best people we can call on to serve on an independent commission to evaluate and investigate what went wrong and how do we, as a country, fix it.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo vs. New London that it was permissible for a government to use the power of eminent domain simply for the purpose of economic development. I am greatly troubled by this case. I do not believe that the government can or should take property for a non-governmental purpose simply because it will generate additional tax revenue. This court decision stands logic on its head--and it is a dangerous precedent as well. I understand that there will be times when it is essential for the government to use eminent domain for the public good. For example, eminent domain is appropriate in order to build a flood control project to protect a city. Or to construct a highway or lay a water line. But it makes no sense for the Court to allow a city--or a state or even the federal government--to use its power to allow private developers to acquire property under the takings clause. Once you start down that path, whose private property is safe? Could my home be condemned because a larger, more expensive house could be built on that lot? Can a local cafe be seized in order to provide space for a new, high-end French restaurant? Government at all levels should be protecting and strengthening private property rights--not diminishing them. So today I am introducing legislation to clarify and strengthen private property rights and ensure that government cannot abuse its power of eminent domain in the name of ``economic development.'' First, my bill prevents the use of Federal funds for any economic development project that uses property that was subject of an eminent domain taking. This would cut off the spigot of Federal dollars to these questionable projects. Frankly, most economic development projects rely in some way on Federal dollars so this provision would have the practical effect of sharply curtailing this practice. Second, my bill is explicit that traditional public use and public purpose projects are still permitted. I am not trying to end the use of eminent domain in order to protect public health and safety or in order to build important infrastructure in our communities. My bill makes this clear. Finally, this bill clearly lays out that the funding prohibition includes takings of private property for the use of, or ownership of, another private individual or entity. One of the most troubling trends in this area is the use of eminent domain by a government that then turns the property over to a private person or group for their private gain. This issue also demands attention at the state level. I commend the efforts of a number of leaders in North Dakota to make changes to our state constitution in a way that will protect private property owners. Our former state attorney general, Heidi Heitkamp, is spearheading an effort to prevent the use of eminent domain at the State level for economic development purposes regardless of whether Federal funds are used. This is an important initiative and I fully support it. It is an important complement to the bill I am introducing today. In fact, much of the language in my bill reflects the language in the initiated measure in North Dakota. Strong private property rights are a fundamental part of our country's heritage and I believe that we should take steps to protect those rights. This bill will afford all Americans better protection against inappropriate uses of eminent domain and seizure of property. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo vs. New London that it was permissible for a government to use the power of eminent domain simply for the purpose of economic development. I am greatly troubled by this case. I do not believe that the government can or should take property for a non-governmental purpose simply because it will generate additional tax revenue. This court decision stands logic on its head--and it is a dangerous precedent as well. I understand that there will be times when it is essential for the government to use eminent domain for the public good. For example, eminent domain is appropriate in order to build a flood control project to protect a city. Or to construct a highway or lay a water line. But it makes no sense for the Court to allow a city--or a state or even the federal government--to use its power to allow private developers to acquire property under the takings clause. Once you start down that path, whose private property is safe? Could my home be condemned because a larger, more expensive house could be built on that lot? Can a local cafe be seized in order to provide space for a new, high-end French restaurant? Government at all levels should be protecting and strengthening private property rights--not diminishing them. So today I am introducing legislation to clarify and strengthen private property rights and ensure that government cannot abuse its power of eminent domain in the name of ``economic development.'' First, my bill prevents the use of Federal funds for any economic development project that uses property that was subject of an eminent domain taking. This would cut off the spigot of Federal dollars to these questionable projects. Frankly, most economic development projects rely in some way on Federal dollars so this provision would have the practical effect of sharply curtailing this practice. Second, my bill is explicit that traditional public use and public purpose projects are still permitted. I am not trying to end the use of eminent domain in order to protect public health and safety or in order to build important infrastructure in our communities. My bill makes this clear. Finally, this bill clearly lays out that the funding prohibition includes takings of private property for the use of, or ownership of, another private individual or entity. One of the most troubling trends in this area is the use of eminent domain by a government that then turns the property over to a private person or group for their private gain. This issue also demands attention at the state level. I commend the efforts of a number of leaders in North Dakota to make changes to our state constitution in a way that will protect private property owners. Our former state attorney general, Heidi Heitkamp, is spearheading an effort to prevent the use of eminent domain at the State level for economic development purposes regardless of whether Federal funds are used. This is an important initiative and I fully support it. It is an important complement to the bill I am introducing today. In fact, much of the language in my bill reflects the language in the initiated measure in North Dakota. Strong private property rights are a fundamental part of our country's heritage and I believe that we should take steps to protect those rights. This bill will afford all Americans better protection against inappropriate uses of eminent domain and seizure of property. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there is one additional point I would like to make on legislation I have introduced. I notice the Energy Information Administration just released its short-term outlook. They forecast dramatic increases for residential energy costs this upcoming winter. I come from North Dakota. We don't exactly have balmy weather in February and January, the middle of winter. We can sometimes have some pretty tough winters. It is a great State, but we have some tough winters. The ranges for heating fuel expenditures for natural gas in the Midwest, according to the EIA, are 69 to 70 percent increases in the winter in the Midwest. We have a lot of folks who are going to have a devil of a time trying to pay these costs. I made the point before, and I know there are people in this Chamber who chafe at this, that the major integrated oil companies have gotten larger through mergers. They are much more powerful. They have the capability, working with others, to determine what happens in pricing and supply. We have OPEC people sitting around a table talking about pricing supplies. Then we have a futures market which is supposed to provide liquidity--which it does, but it provides much more than that nowadays. It is rampant speculation in spot markets. The result of that is the highest prices we have seen in this country. Last year, the price of oil was $34.50 a barrel--January 31, 2004. At that price the oil companies are making record profits. Now it is $30 above that. That is $7 billion a month in extra profit, $80 billion on a yearly basis of extra profit. That, in my judgment, is unfair. Flowing through it is a 70-percent increase in natural gas prices to those trying to heat their homes, or flowing through the gas pump where you put in 15 gallons and pay $52. That is unfair. I think there ought to be a windfall profits tax recapturing that windfall and using it in rebates to consumers. I don't begrudge anyone a fair profit, but this is not a fair market and I believe Congress should take some action. This issue existed long before Hurricane Katrina formed and hit this country, and I believe it behooves this Congress to address these issues, especially before we go into the winter heating season and the folks, particularly in the northern Great Plains and other States, are going to pay 70 percent increases--in some cases a price they simply cannot afford to pay for something as basic as heating their homes. This Congress needs to act. I hope one of the actions will be to consider the legislation I have introduced. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. The majority leader, my colleague from Tennessee, speaks of methamphetamine. It is an enormous problem in this country, especially in rural States. I certainly appreciate the comments he has made today. It is something on which we must provide enormous focus. It is destroying lives. It is one of the most highly addictive drugs we know. You can cook methamphetamine virtually anywhere--an abandoned farmhouse. You can buy the products from which you make methamphetamine, in many States, across the counter. This is a deadly drug causing havoc for so many people. If you talk to law enforcement people about dealing with methamphetamine, they will tell you that when they arrest someone involved in methamphetamine, they don't quite know what they are going to get. These are people who can become the most enormously violent people in the world, or they can be passive. You don't quite know what you are going to find, what you are going to get. It contributes to substantial crime and destroys lives. I appreciate the comments of my colleague, the majority leader.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me ask that morning business be closed.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have offered an amendment that is pending on this appropriations bill, and I wanted to speak to that amendment in the hope that we will be able to get a vote on that amendment at some point soon. The amendment deals with trade, and because this appropriations bill deals with funding for the Department of Commerce and also the U.S. Trade Representative, this is the right place to propose that amendment. Let me begin by talking for a moment about what is happening in trade. As you know, we have the largest trade deficit in the history of our country by far. It continues to grow and grow and grow and grow. This trade deficit is dangerous. It is irresponsible for us to continue to run these kinds of trade deficits. Yet nearly every day in this country, 7 days a week, all year long, we are importing about $2 billion more than we are exporting. We are importing a substantial amount of product--yes, energy and food but shirts and shoes and trinkets and trousers--from every part of the world, and the fact is we are exporting American jobs. Let me describe a couple of those jobs, and then I am going to describe what my amendment does. A young woman named Natasha Humphries did what we are supposed to do in this country. She did everything American workers are supposed to do to compete in this global economy. She got a degree from Stanford University in 1996. She went to work for Apple Computer. She continued to acquire all kinds of new skills in high tech through classes and seminars. And she moved down to become a senior software testing engineer at palmOne, the company that makes the well-known hand held computing device called Palm Pilot. I want to show you the last message that this young woman left on her Palm Pilot. Natasha Humphries left this message on her Palm Pilot: My job has gone to India. She lost her job. Natasha Humphries got fired and the company moved all those jobs to India. Oh, there is one more thing. Natasha was required by her company to train the Indian workers who took her job. And so the company, searching for lower priced labor, fires American workers and moves their jobs to India. That was 2002 that palmOne's management decided to move all their product testing to India and China where they can pay $2 an hour and less. They learned that some of those workers were not quite as productive as the American workers, but they decided to make a change, so that the workers in India were more productive, by sending American engineers to India. And so they sent American workers to India, trained the Indian engineers and then came back and fired the American workers. And so Natasha was laid off August 2003, along with 40 percent of her U.S. coworkers. She sued palmOne for wrongful termination. She also filed a reverse discrimination case. Then she found herself on the unemployment line struggling to cover health care costs for her 6-year-old son who has sickle cell anemia. So this is a message from this Stanford graduate, this engineer: My job has gone to India. It could have been a message repeated 1.5 million times. Oh, not by anybody who wears a blue suit, though, who is in the Senate; nobody who wears suspenders and smokes cigars and wears blue suits and in big business or politics ever loses their jobs. It is the other folks who lose their jobs. Let me describe a few. You recognize this. Fruit of the Loom. You know Fruit of the Loom; they had advertised with the folks who wear grape outfits, red grapes, apples, the fruit folks, catchy little commercials on television, except that Fruit of the Loom has now left America. If you are wearing Fruit of the Loom shorts today, you are wearing Chinese shorts or Mexican shorts. Or you are wearing Chinese T- shirts or Mexican T-shirts. Yes, it is clever and cute, except that 3,200 people who worked for Fruit of the Loom in the United States of America don't work for them anymore because these shirts and shorts and the things that Fruit of the Loom makes are gone. They are gone in search of 30-cent-an-hour labor. I will not speak at great length about Huffy bicycles because I have spoken at great length about Huffy bicycles so often, except to say this. This is a new decal between the handlebars and the fenders, and you will see it is a decal of the globe. That used to be an American flag when American workers produced them, but the American workers made 11 dollars an hour plus, so all those jobs went to China. Now Huffy pays its workers 33 cents an hour, 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day and, by the way, there is no more American flag on this bike. It is a globe. Oh, they still call Huffy an American brand. It is just not made in America, and all the American workers who used to make it lost their jobs. You remember the television commercials about the Maytag repairman really struggling to stay awake because you don't repair a Maytag. Well, 1,600 Maytag U.S. jobs have gone to Mexico and Korea. Big Blue, IBM. It is interesting, the paper trail from IBM; 13,000 IBM workers in Europe and the United States went to India where they hired more than 14,000 workers, and if you look at the internal documents, IBM said, Oh, by the way, we do not want to suggest to our employees this is offshoring or outsourcing; never use those words. The last thing they wrote to their employees was: This has nothing to do with your performance. Oh, no, it is never personal, is it? It has nothing to do with your performance that you are losing your job. Trade deal after trade deal, trade agreement after trade agreement, through Democratic and Republican administrations, have been incompetent, fundamentally incompetent in standing up for the economic interests of this country. Who on Earth is going to stand up for the interests of American workers? People say: But you don't understand, Senator Dorgan, this is the way of the future; this is a global economy. It is global all right. We galloped along toward the global economy, but the rules have not kept pace. So we are now able to go to the big box stores and buy products that were made by sweat labor of people who all too often are earning 20, 30, 40 cents an hour, maybe $1 an hour, and no benefits, working 6 days a week, 7 days a week. And we say to the American workers, that is what you should compete with? We have been through a trade agreement called GATT, a trade agreement with the United States and Canada, one with the United States and Canada and Mexico called NAFTA, a trade agreement called CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement. We have been through all these free-trade agreements. Every trade agreement we approved--I should say without my vote in support--has resulted in a larger trade deficit for this country. Why is that the case? They are negotiated incompetently by American negotiators who do not stand up for the economic interests of this country. They feel they have nothing to protect. Right now we have something called the Doha round. Have you been to Doha recently? I suspect not. There is a reason they do these trade rounds in far, out of the way places. In Doha, they are negotiating new trade agreements behind closed doors, in secret. Does anybody here know what those trade agreements are, what might be in them? We know this: There are 100 separate proposals in this round of trade negotiations, 100 separate proposals by other countries that would weaken the remedies in American trade law to protect our interests. We also know our trade negotiators have said everything is on the table, meaning they are willing to negotiate away, if necessary, the protections in our trade laws. These are the laws that allow us to impose countervailing duties on other countries that wish to sell unfairly subsidized products into our marketplace and destroy a domestic industry. They are willing to negotiate away our antidumping laws that would allow another country to dump products into our country at below cost and destroy an American industry or business and jobs. Why would American negotiators be willing to put that on the table? Are they not willing to stand up for this country's economic interests, for this country's jobs, good jobs? The amendment I have offered is very simple, painfully simple. Interestingly enough, the White House has issued a veto warning should my amendment prevail in the Senate today. My amendment is very simple. My amendment says no funds in this act funding the U.S. Trade Representative's office and the Commerce Department may be used to be involved in negotiations that will weaken America's protections in trade law, the protections that exist-- countervailing duties, antidumping--nothing shall be done or can be done using these funds in this act to weaken America's trade laws to protect our economic interests. For that, we get a letter from Secretary Gutierrez and Rob Portman, the U.S. Trade Representative, saying they strongly oppose this amendment. We heard all morning the administration will recommend a veto if this is adopted. Let me give a bit of background. On May 14, 2002, 61 Senators voted for an amendment that Senators Dayton, Craig, and I cosponsored. That amendment said that any trade agreement that weakened U.S. trade laws, especially remedies that protect our country against unfair trade, could not be considered by the Senate under fast-track rules. Sixty-one Senators voted for that amendment. It is essentially the same as the amendment I am offering today. The question is, Are you going to stand up for the economic interests of this country? I don't even know where to start or stop when I talk about trade because the pain of bad trade agreements is not a pain inflicted on those who are privileged, and that includes all of us because we have not lost our jobs. But no country will long remain a world economic power if it does not have a strong, vibrant manufacturing base. The manufacturing jobs traditionally and historically in this country have been the jobs that pay well, the jobs that have good benefits. It is interesting, when we take a look at the changes from 30, 35, 40 years ago, the largest corporation in our country was General Motors. They paid good wages, they paid very substantial benefits, and most people who went to work for General Motors worked there for a lifetime. Now the largest American corporation, I am told, is Wal-Mart. Their wages are not so hot, do not have many benefits for a lot of their workers, the average wage is $17,000 a year, and their turnover is about 70 percent. If those figures are wrong, perhaps someone can correct me. The point I am making simply is this: Times have changed. Those who control the economic levers in this country--bigger and bigger enterprises--have decided that it is in their interest to find the lowest cost labor in the world with the least nuisance attached to that labor. That is the nuisance of not being able to hire children, the nuisance of not being able to pollute the rivers or pollute the air. If they can find labor under those circumstances, employ it, and then produce the shirts, socks, shoes, trinkets, and toys, and ship them to the American marketplace, have them sit on the store shelf in Los Angeles, Fargo, Denver, Tampa, or New York and have the consumers buy those products, that somehow everyone will be better off. That is as flawed a set of economic assumptions as I have seen in my studies of economics. This is not working, and yet everyone insists it is. Let me put up the chart that shows our trade deficits. I went to a small school, I told my colleagues before, a high school senior class of nine in a small farming community. I was in the top five, and that qualified me for the Senate from back home. But I was smart enough coming from that school to understand what this is. This is a barrel full of trouble--deep, deep, and deeper Federal trade deficits every single year. This is running in the wrong direction and hurting our country. Does anybody seem to care much at all? Is the President paying any attention to this? Does Congress pay much attention to this? Nobody. No, we all have to pretend this is working well, like this is good for our country. We put on our pressed blue suits every morning and talk about how wonderful all of this is. Maybe if the politicians' jobs were at stake, maybe if some CEOs' jobs were at stake they would have a different view. Let me give a couple examples of what concerns me. I have talked at great length about unfair trade. I could give you a good many examples. One example: We are now negotiating with Korea. Let me talk about automobile trade with Korea. Last year, we took from Korea about 680,000 automobiles into our marketplace for the American consumer to purchase; 680,000 Korean cars came here from Korea. Guess how many American cars we sold in Korea-- 3,800. That is right, 680,000 coming in this direction, and we sold 3,800 cars in Korea. Is that because they don't want American cars in Korea? No, it is because the Koreans don't want cars sold in Korea coming from the United States, and they have all kinds of policies and interesting devices to try to shut down the sale of U.S. automobiles to Korea; otherwise, what would explain that dramatic imbalance? That is how out of whack our trade policy is. Let me describe to you another example of this incompetence. This country did a bilateral trade agreement with China just a few years ago. The agreement said that after a phase-in, any U.S. cars we would sell in China would bear a tariff of 25 percent. Any Chinese cars they would sell in America would bear a tariff of 2.5 percent. So our negotiators sat down with a country with whom we had a trade deficit of somewhere around $100 billion a year and said: With respect to automobiles, you can charge a tariff that is 10 times higher than that which we will charge on bilateral automobile trade. That is just incompetence, in my judgment, and a failure to stand up for this country's economic interests. Oh, yes, this is a footnote: China is ramping up a very significant automobile industry. General Motors, as a matter of fact, has sued an enterprise in China called Chery, C-h-e-r-y, one letter away from ``Chevy.'' By the way, General Motors sued them for stealing production line blueprints for a car called QQ. And China is moving very rapidly to develop an automobile industry, a robust industry, and one that will be an export industry. Mark my words, Chinese cars will be sold in this country because our negotiators agreed to a proposition that they could impose a tariff 10 times higher on U.S. cars sold in China than we would impose on Chinese cars sold in the United States. I would like to find the name of the negotiator who agreed to that because that person was not standing up for American workers, American business, or America's economic future. I talked about cars from Korea, and a bilateral agreement on automobile trade from China. I could talk about dozens and dozens of similar circumstances. The list goes on and on. The letter I received from the White House with respect to this amendment is a letter that says: By taking off the negotiating table any agreements that would lead to changes in U.S. trade remedy law, the amendment would prevent us from negotiating agreements to improve protections against foreign unfair trade practices. What a lot of rubbish. Does anybody really think that they are going to negotiate an improvement to protections for this country in trade? I don't think so. They don't intend to negotiate improvements. What is going to happen is, they will put the antidumping and countervailing duty laws on the table for negotiating. They have said they are willing to put them on the table, and they will get negotiated away. These negotiations are not about any strengthening of our trade protections. I know ``protection'' is a dirty word among those who stand on the street corners in robes and chant free trade, but we do have to protect our interests when another company decides to dump into our country products that are produced at a much higher cost than they are willing to be sold in this country because they want to destroy a domestic industry. We have to protect ourselves in that circumstance. The Commerce Secretary and Mr. Portman, the trade ambassador, are saying this amendment would prevent them from improving protections. Please. Our foreign trading partners don't come to the negotiating table looking to strengthen America's trade protections. They come to weaken them. And our negotiators are all too willing to trade away our trade laws. No one wants to address this trade crisis. The President has been busy gassing up Air Force One trying to privatize Social Security the last 9 months or so. What I think we ought to do is stare this problem straight in the eye, just stare this problem straight in the eye and say: This is a problem for our country. This is about America's future. It is about economic growth. It is about opportunity and jobs for our kids. But nobody wants to do much of that anymore. Oh, we can compete, they say. Go to school, get a little better educational resume, and we can compete. I just described the circumstance of a young woman who competed, and her last message on her Palm Pilot, as that young engineer from Stanford lost her job was: My job is going to China. This is not a tough choice, it seems to me. This amendment I have offered is very straightforward. It will, I am sure, not be the subject of substantial debate. I would love to have a debate on the floor of the Senate about this issue. I do not expect to have much of a debate because those who support all of this trade strategy that has begun to weaken this country, the trade strategy that has produced choking trade deficits, they don't talk much about it publicly; they just vote for all of this nonsense. My hope is we will have a vote on this. My guess is that at some point in the future, we are going to look back and we are going to say, What on Earth happened in this country? It is not as if we didn't have notice. There has been a lot of discussion these days: Did we have notice? Were we prepared? Did we take action? Let me talk about this crisis, about the loss of American jobs, a lot of them. Ask yourself, Did we have notice about this? In the last 10 years, did we have notice that company after company after company did not say the Pledge of Allegiance in the boardroom anymore because they are not American companies, they are international enterprises responsible to their stockholders, believing if they can find 30-cent- an-hour labor in Indonesia or India or Sri Lanka or China or Bangladesh, that is where they ought to produce and they ought to do that at the expense of American jobs? My guess is somebody is going to look back at some point soon and say, What on Earth were we thinking, sleeping through this problem, deciding that once we had lifted ourselves up as a country, once we had lifted America up as a country, with minimum wage, safe workplaces, the right to organize, the right to understand you should not pollute the air and the water as you produce, all of those things we did that made this a better place in which to live and all those things we did that grew a middle class in America-- that once we decided that, that we ought not to protect it? We are going to say, Why didn't we decide to protect that? Instead of pushing us down, that our goal would have been to pull the others up? Yet that has not been the case. That has not been the strategy. Our strategy is, if companies can find cheaper labor, then you just get rid of American workers. I wish to make this point. We have a century of history about these issues that many people, especially those who debate this trade issue, want to forget. I mentioned this morning, and I probably should not have, a man named James Fyler. I said James Fyler died of lead poisoning--he was shot 55 times. I should not make light of that at all. James Fyler was a hero. He died being shot 55 times because on April 20, 1914, he was out demonstrating with other workers in coal mines, demanding fairness for workers, demanding the right for workers to organize, demanding to lift themselves up for that. He gave his life for that. Think of what people have given of themselves in a century to build what we built in this country: an understanding that workers have rights, an understanding that we have obligations to each other. James Fyler is dead. But what he and others built is an understanding about the freedom to organize--something very important. I could give you names of people who are sitting in prison right now in China who decided to organize their workforce. They were prosecuted, and they are sitting in prison in China because you can't organize a workforce there. It doesn't matter what they do to you as a workforce, they have a right to do that to you, and if you try to organize, you go to prison. First you get fired, and if you are lucky that is all that happens. Otherwise you go to prison. All of this somehow seems forgotten when you pole-vault over all these issues. Because no one else is here to speak, I wish to make this point a little differently. I know it is somewhat off of this specific topic, but it relates to it. I was asked some while ago by a young high school kid: What is the best speech you have ever heard? You know, I heard a lot of great speeches at various venues, but one of the memorable speeches I told him about was a speech in the House of Representatives to a joint session of the Congress, a speech at which the House and Senate are seated and they normally receive a message from the President, in most cases the State of the Union. On this date, perhaps 15 years ago now, I was seated in the House Chamber when the Speaker was announced by the doorkeeper to the joint session of Congress. He walked to the front of the room. He was kind of a chubby fellow, about 5 foot 8, handlebar mustache, and the applause waved over him for a long period of time. And then he began to speak. His speech was so unbelievably powerful. He described something we knew from our history books at that moment. He described a Saturday morning in a shipyard in Gdansk, Poland. He said he had been an unemployed electrician and had been fired from the job because he was leading a strike against the Communist government for the right of laborers to be free to organize. On that Saturday morning, he was beaten severely with clubs and fists and, bleeding, he was taken to the edge of the shipyard, hoisted to the top of the barbed-wire fence, and thrown over the shipyard fence into the dirt. He told us he lay in the dirt facedown, bleeding, wondering what to do next. Our history books tell us what he did next. He pulled himself back up, and he climbed right back over the fence into that shipyard. Ten years later, this unemployed electrician was introduced to a joint session of Congress as the President of his country. His name was Lech Walesa. He said to us this. He said: The Communists in Poland had all the guns. We had none. The Communists had all the bullets. We had none. We were armed only with an idea--that people ought to be in control of their own destiny. Workers ought to have the right to organize. He said: Ideas are more powerful than guns. This common man with uncommon courage--no diplomat, no scholar, no military general, no politician, an unemployed electrician--became President of his country on the power of an idea, an idea that this country has embraced for well over a century, an idea that seems somehow to be diminished these days by those who believe it doesn't matter what workers are used. Workers are like wrenches--use them, discard them when you are done. Find a wrench on the other side of the globe that is this much less expensive and somehow it will benefit a consumer on this side of the globe, that somehow none of this matters because it is not interconnected. They are dead wrong in a manner that is hurting this country and will hurt this country's future. I want things to be better in other countries, but I want our country to take care of things here at home first and then aspire to help others to lift themselves up. But it is important that our first obligation is to take care of things here in this country. These trade negotiators and these trade agreements are trade agreements that I believe have undermined the economic strength of our country. Once again, I would love to spend 2 hours someday on the floor debating trade issues with my colleagues, but that likely will not happen. That is because while there are plenty of votes for fast track and plenty of votes for trade agreements, and it doesn't matter what they contain, there are not many people who want to debate specifics of bilateral trade with China or Korea or Europe or Japan. I would love to talk about beef and Japan. I would love to talk about trade sanctions we have taken against the Europeans. Oh man, are we tough. I talk about our trade negotiators having no backbone or spine or willingness to stand up. We took action against the Europeans when we got upset. We decided to slap duties on truffles, Roquefort cheese, and goose liver. That is going to make our trade partners quake in their boots. My God, you are going to put tariffs on truffles and goose liver. When will this country's trade negotiators and its politicians have the backbone to stand up for the economic interests of that which we have built--a country that produces good jobs that pay well and have benefits, a country that produces that without having to apologize for it but that decides it is good for our country to have good jobs that pay well with good benefits? Mr. President, I spoke far longer than I intended. This amendment is an amendment that I have offered. It is germane. It will require a vote. My hope is that enough of my colleagues, sufficient numbers of my colleagues will vote to support this and we will send another very strong message to our trade negotiators. I have said earlier that this has happened through Democrat and Republican administrations. Nothing has changed. I would like to see it changed, and I would like to see it changed now. Perhaps with this amendment we can take a first step in making that change. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, with respect to the list of amendments that has been filed to the pending bill, the amendment that Senator Salazar has filed dealing with the hurricane, I ask unanimous consent that amendment be attributed to Senator Bingaman.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1670, which I have filed at the desk.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will describe very briefly this amendment--I shall come to the floor and talk about it more later--and then I will use the remaining minutes that are available to talk about an amendment I have previously offered to the bill. This amendment, very simply, deals with the contracting that our country is paying for, particularly with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan. It especially deals with establishment of a special committee to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse. Now, I indicated yesterday that whenever you speak of the company Halliburton, people think you are coming to the floor to criticize the Vice President. Let me say that is not the case. The Vice President was the president of Halliburton but not during any of the time that any of this has happened. But Halliburton has been, I believe, the largest contractor in Iraq. Halliburton and some other companies have been cited in ways that make my blood boil, and I believe it has the same reaction with the rest of the American people. Let me read some headlines, if I might. Nobody, by the way, seems to want to investigate this, and nobody seems to care much about it. ``Halliburton Has Failed to Account for $1.8 billion in Charges'' for work performed in Iraq and Kuwait. That is from the Wall Street Journal of August 11, 2004. ``Pentagon Auditors Have Recommended Withholding 15% of Payments to Halliburton.'' That is from the Wall Street Journal of December 10, 2003. . . . the [Pentagon's] top financial officer . . . alerted [Secretary] Rumsfeld of ``significant issues regarding the timeliness and adequacy of KBR price proposals'' and ``deficiencies'' in its billing, purchasing, and estimating systems. ``Whistleblowers Have Documented Halliburton Waste, Fraud, and Abuse.'' ``Halliburton Overcharged $186 Million for Meals.'' That is from the Federal Times of June 21, 2004. ``Halliburton Overcharged $212 Million for Oil Deliveries.'' I could go through this. I have a sheet that is eight pages long. And, yes, it talks about $85,000 new trucks that are dumped on the side of the road because they have a flat tire or a fuel pump that is plugged. What do they do with it? Well, this is direct testimony from people who worked for Halliburton who drove the trucks, abandoned the trucks, let them torch the trucks for a flat tire. The list is unbelievable when you hear what has happened. A contractor pays $45 for a case of soda, $100 for cleaning a 15- pound bag of laundry. We had one fellow who was buying towels--towels-- for our soldiers. He held up two towels: This is a towel we would normally purchase, but we were asked by Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown, & Root, KBR, to buy towels with their logo on it. So you doubled the price of the towel to ship to the soldiers because it has the logo of the company on the towel. In 1941, Harry Truman was in this Chamber. We had a Democrat in the White House. A Democratic Senator demanded an investigation of waste, fraud, and abuse, and a special committee was established called the Truman Committee. They went after waste, fraud, and abuse. I am sure it was not very pleasant for Franklin Delano Roosevelt down at the White House with a Democrat in the Senate demanding an investigation of waste, fraud, and abuse. The fact is, the Truman Committee uncovered massive waste, fraud, and abuse. Now we have a President and a Congress controlled by one party. We do not even have oversight hearings on these things. I am the only one who has been holding hearings in the Democratic Policy Committee and having the whistleblowers come forward and talk about the massive waste, fraud, and abuse that exists. No oversight hearings. No accountability. Nobody seems to care. My amendment, very simply, says there ought to be established a special committee to investigate this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse. Let me say to those who say, Well, you are trying to legislate on an appropriations bill, yes, I am. I am. I tried to offer this on the Defense authorization bill, which is where it belongs. I did offer it to the Defense authorization bill, and the Defense authorization bill was taken off the floor of the Senate; we are told never to reappear again. So the only option we have is to offer this kind of amendment on this appropriations bill. So I wanted to describe what this amendment is. It would establish a type of Truman Committee to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse. It is not about politics. It is about, on behalf of the American people, asking the tough questions about waste, fraud, and abuse. We are shoveling money out the door, shoveling money--billions and billions, tens of billions of dollars--to be spent in the country of Iraq for rebuilding Iraq. Then we hear stories about the American taxpayer paying for the air-conditioning of a building in Iraq, and then it goes to a contractor and a subcontractor and somebody else who subcontracts from that, and by the time it gets installed, it is a ceiling fan, and the American taxpayer paid for air-conditioning. Guess what. It is going on all over. The company orders 50,000 pounds of nails, 25 tons of nails, and they order the wrong size, so Halliburton's nails are lying in the sand somewhere in Iraq. Does anybody care about that? We are talking about billions of dollars of no-bid contracts. I am going to hold a hearing on Friday with the woman who rose to the highest rank--the highest civilian employee in the Corps of Engineers, Bunnatine Greenhouse. And what is happening to her? Well, she had the guts to speak up and speak out, saying these no-bid contracts were being awarded to Halliburton in an inappropriate way without following the rules. Well, guess what happened to Bunnatine Greenhouse for raising those questions. She is losing her career over in the Pentagon at the Corps of Engineers. She is being demoted. She always had excellent, sterling evaluations--until she said: You can't do this. This isn't a buddy system. You can't be awarding contracts this way. For her honesty and for her courage, she is told she is either going to be fired or going to be demoted, against, I might say, the wishes of the inspector general who is investigating it. Amendment No. 1665 Mr. President, let me talk for a moment about the other amendment I have offered to this bill. As you know, today's trade announcement is we had a $58 billion--$58 billion--trade deficit in the last month; about $700 billion a year, we are going to see. That is $700 billion a year more than we send out in exports that we purchase in imports. So let me talk about this. Here is what is happening in American trade. We are drowning in trade deficits. As you know, attendant to that, we are sending jobs overseas at a rapid rate. Fruit of the Loom--you all remember the people dressed up as grapes, singing their little Fruit of the Loom songs. It used to be American underwear. But American underwear is no longer American. If you are wearing Fruit of the Loom somewhere in America today, you are wearing Mexican shorts or probably Chinese shorts and T-shirts. So Fruit of the Loom is gone, and 3,200 people who used to work for Fruit of the Loom are no longer employed. PalmPilot--if anybody has worked on a PalmPilot, here is the last message from a young woman--I have her name, and I will not go through it, but I will at some other time when I have the time to do that. Here is the last message from a women who worked for PalmPilot. By the way, she was forced to train her replacement, who is a worker from India, because those jobs went to India. Here is her last message on her PalmPilot: ``My job's gone to India!!'' I have spoken at length about Huffy bicycles. I will not speak longer about them today, but all the folks in Ohio were fired. They used to make Huffies. Incidentally, this little thing between the handle bars and the front fender, that used to be an American flag decal. They cleverly changed it to a globe once the jobs went to China, and all the American workers were fired. Oh, it is still an American brand, it is just that Americans do not get a chance to make them any more because the American workers were paid $11 an hour, plus benefits, and now they are made in China, but with workers who make 33 cents an hour and work 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. They are still sold in Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Sears. They are called an American bicycle. They are not. They are not an American bicycle. And the Maytag repairman--all those television commercials about this old bloke having nothing to do. Well, 1,600 U.S. Maytag jobs went to Mexico and Korea. I could do this for a long time. Even as it proceeds to lay off up to 13,000 workers in Europe and the United States, IBM plans to increase its payroll in India by more than 14,000 workers. That was 2 months ago in the New York Times. Now, what does all this mean for our country? It means our country is losing economic strength, losing jobs. We are hollowing out America's manufacturing base. In the last 20 years, our manufacturing base has shrunk by half. We are told it is all right, and it is going to be fine in the long run if those who produce, yes, American companies that produce, search for the lowest cost production anywhere in the world and then they land in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, China or somewhere else and hire someone else for 16 cents an hour. And, yes, they do. They will hire 12-year-old kids for 12 cents an hour and work them 12 hours a day. If you doubt it, I will show you where it happens. People say: Well, that is all right because all those jobs, they are going to go elsewhere, but we will have higher wage, higher skilled jobs in this country. They are all wrong. It does not work that way. This country is losing economic strength and losing economic opportunity. The people who are losing their jobs because American jobs are moving elsewhere, in search of lower wages, those are people who are not able to find jobs that are equivalent jobs. In almost all cases, they find the next job at a lower wage rate. This is a race to the bottom. Rather than aspiring to lift other countries up, it is driving down wage rates and opportunities in our country. There is a man named James Fyler. James Fyler died of lead poisoning. He was shot 54 times. I suppose that is acute lead poisoning. He was shot 54 times long ago because he had the temerity to stand up for the ability and the right of workers to organize. So he lost his life. I could cite many others who lost their lives standing up for the right of people to organize as workers. Apparently, there are companies who have decided to pole-vault all over that and produce elsewhere where workers cannot organize; produce in China, where if a worker tries to organize, he or she can be sent to prison. If you want names, I will give you names of at least a dozen people--and there are hundreds more--who are sitting in prisons in China because they wanted to organize workers. Producing in China is easier, producing in other countries is easier because you don't have to worry about child labor, about dumping chemicals into the air and water. You don't have to worry about workers organizing. What is going wrong in trade is going to dramatically injure this country and its future and opportunities. I am offering an amendment because we have trade negotiators now negotiating in the Doha round who have indicated it is all right and we will consider negotiating away our opportunity to protect ourselves against the dumping of products into this country, into our marketplace at below their cost of acquisition, which is an opportunity to ruin the domestic industry and drive domestic industry out of business. We protect ourselves with antidumping laws. We protect ourselves against deep subsidies of products that are dumped into our marketplace with countervailing duties. Our trade negotiators have signalled that that which our trade partners want, to get rid of our countervailing duties or antidumping laws, basic provisions that protect American workers, protect American jobs against the unfairness of trade, our trade negotiators have said: It is on the table. We are willing to consider that. My amendment says no money will be used by the folks in the Commerce Department and the U.S. trade ambassador's office negotiating these trade agreements to weaken trade protections for American workers and businesses. It is a simple amendment but important in terms of the future. I notice my colleague from West Virginia has arrived. I know he is set to assume his address to the Senate. Let me, in courtesy to him, close my remarks and simply say, I intend to come to the floor later this afternoon to speak again about both of these amendments which are important, the addition of which will add significantly to this appropriations bill. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

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