Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, Senator Wellstone has offered an amendment that deals with a subject I mentioned this morning, and I wanted to speak a bit more about that subject. It is a subject that, by its title, most people would not think much about. It is called inversion. What does inversion mean with respect to corporate America these days? Inversion is a process by which a corporation decides to renounce its American citizenship. A number of high-profile corporations have done that, saying, we wish to renounce our American citizenship and become citizens of another country--in a couple of cases, Bermuda. So an American corporation says, we no longer want to be an American corporation, we want to be a Bermuda corporation. Why would a U.S. corporation decide it wants to renounce its citizenship? The answer, of course, is very simple. Because there are circumstances under which, in the renouncement of citizenship by a corporation, called an inversion, they can save millions, or tens of millions, or perhaps hundreds of millions, of dollars in taxation. So some companies make a decision, we would like to no longer be U.S. citizens in order that we might save money on our tax bill. I happen to think that is unpatriotic. We are at war. Our country is at war with terrorists. Nearly 1 year ago, on 9/11, we were attacked with unspeakable horror by terrorists in New York City, in Washington, DC, at the Pentagon, and then there was the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania. Since that time, of course, we have had a remarkable speech by President Bush, one of the best I have heard in my service in Congress, calling this country to cooperate and to work together for a common purpose, to wage this war on terrorism. Then in the middle of all of this, we read stories about corporations that decide they want to renounce their citizenship so they can save on taxation. I ask a question of a company that decides it wants to renounce its American citizenship: If it gets in trouble somewhere around the world, if some dictator wants to expropriate its assets in some country around the world, whom is it going to call? The Bermuda Navy? The Bermuda Marines? The Bermuda Army? I do not think so. It is shameful to see companies do what are called inversions and renounce their American citizenship. They have a perfect legal right to do it under today's law, but there are ways to try to plug that hole in our Tax Code, and a number of us are working on that. The Senator from Minnesota offers another proposal with respect to this specific bill, and that is to say those companies that decide they want to renounce their American citizenship should not be bidding for contracts under homeland security. We have a lot to do with respect to the needs in this country, and the requirement that we all get together, work together, stay together, to fight terrorism and do what we must as Americans to respond to this threat. There is something horribly out of step with our requirements as Americans, our requirements of citizenship, our requirements as the stewards of this democracy, to see some corporations in this country decide they no longer want to be American, they no longer want to have U.S. citizenship. Technically and currently under the law, they have a right to renounce their citizenship, but I think it sends a terrible message to our country and to the world when they do that. Yes, they can save on taxes by doing it perhaps. The question then will be: Who will pay the taxes they do not pay? Which other Americans would they choose to burden with this additional tax bill? Americans working in the manufacturing plants they used to have in this country or perhaps still have in this country? Do they want to shift the burden to working people? That is what happens with respect to inversions. I indicated I am going to hold some hearings on a couple of these issues. There is some unfinished business with respect to this issue of corporate responsibility. We passed a bill and the President signed it, and that is important because we have seen now the emergence and the disclosures of corporate scandals unparalleled in my lifetime. You know, I have a card in my pocket. I put it in my pocket this morning, because it reminded me of something important. I was on an airplane recently. I was sitting in an aisle seat, and a man sitting two rows ahead of me in the aisle seat across the aisle, as we landed and before we disembarked, passed me his business card. His business card named him and the company for which he worked. He is president of the company. He wrote on the back of the card with a ballpoint pen and passed it to me. I had never met the man, did not know him. He said: Dear Senator Dorgan, Good morning. I am president of a corporation. I work very hard and I am honest. I believe there are more like me than not. This is the president of a corporation. His first name is John. I sent John a letter and said: I do not ever speak of corporate scandal without saying I think we ought to understand American business by and large in this country is run by wonderful men and women, good stewards of the investors' money, people who want to do the right thing, people who do not try to find where the line is and cross the line, people who do not cook the books, people who work long hours and are honest and do the right thing. That is the rule in American business, in my judgment. But it is also true that the emergence and the disclosures of these corporate scandals tarnish all in American business and injure those honest, hard-working people trying to run American companies. It injures the ability to raise capital because it destroys people's faith in the system. They invest in a stock in a company they have never visited. They buy a stock in a company they do not know much about, but they trust the CEO, they trust the financial statements, they trust the accounting firm that reviewed the statements, they trust the law firm that gave advice to the CEO, they trust the board of directors. So they invest in a share of stock in a company they have never visited or never seen. But there have been far too many instances recently of corporate executives acting in complete disregard of their responsibilities as business leaders. And although we recently passed an accounting reform bill to tackle some of these problems, we have unfinished business. One issue involves inversions, the issue that Senator Wellstone is bringing to our attention today. Another important issue involves bankruptcies, and an amendment I tried to offer to the corporate responsibility bill. That amendment was blocked by the Senator from Texas, Mr. Gramm. He blocked that amendment for a couple of days, and I was not able to put it on the bill, but it deals with this. It is an amendment that says, if in the year prior to the bankruptcy of a corporation, the major executives in the corporation are receiving millions of dollars in incentive and bonus payments, there ought to be a disgorgement and recapture of that money to go to the stockholders and the employees. It is very simple. Since the time that I was blocked in offering that amendment, the Financial Times did an investigation and an evaluation of the 25 largest bankruptcies in our country since January of last year. What did it show? It showed that 230 top executives in the 25 largest companies that filed for bankruptcy took $3 billion out of those companies in compensation as those companies headed towards bankruptcy. Well, guess what. The investors lost their shirts, they lost their life savings, and, as the Financial Times says, the barons of bankruptcy, the executives running companies into bankruptcy, went off with a pocketful of gold. There is something wrong with that. That is a piece of unfinished business. We ought to pass legislation that says prior bankruptcy, if executives are getting bonus and incentive payments as this company heads towards bankruptcy, there ought to be the right to recapture that money and use it to help offset the perks and costs with respect to investors and employees. That is one piece of unfinished business. Another piece deals with inversions and the tax with respect to those corporations that want to renounce their American citizenship. There is unfinished business with respect to corporate responsibility. We did a wonderful thing in passing that bill. Senator Paul Sarbanes deserves our unending thanks for the work he did to put that bill together. The President signed it. It is a bill destined to give confidence to people, but there is more to do. If we stop here we will have stopped before we got to the intersection. There is more to do. Part of that deals with inversion, and part of it deals with disgorgement and recapturing of funds as CEOs took companies into bankruptcy. I intend, in the coming weeks, to be among those in Congress who will address these issues. We should not decide the bill we passed represents the end of corporate responsibility legislation in the Senate. I conclude by saying the fellow that passed me his business card on an airplane a few days ago is right. He said: I'm president of a corporation. I work very hard and I'm honest. I believe there are more like me than not. He is right about that. Absolutely. And on behalf of people like him, we have a responsibility to be tough and to go after those who abuse their trust and steal money. We have a responsibility to see to it that they do more than 2 years of hard tennis at a minimum security institution somewhere. The Senator from Minnesota does us a service by offering this subject on the floor of the Senate. There is more to do on inversion, but there is more to do beyond inversion and corporate responsibility, including disgorgement and recapturing of bankruptcy incentive and bonus payments to CEOs.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is the pending business is the amendment offered by Senator Wellstone.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me follow the remarks of my colleague from Minnesota, Senator Wellstone, and say as a cosponsor of this disaster relief that I have never voted against a proposal to help people in this country who have suffered a disaster. There are many kinds of disasters that people suffer, and in each and every case I have been pleased to be a part of this Congress to say to them you are not alone, the rest of the country wishes to help. It is an important thing to do. Disaster, in this case, is spelled in part of my State by a drought that is devastating. It means those who have invested their lives and fortunes to put seeds into the ground, hoping to raise a crop and to have some income with which to raise a family, have discovered that drought has killed their crop. There is nothing to harvest. There is nothing left. In other parts of the State, flooding has prevented fields from being planted. Yes, we ought to respond to this in a positive way. I support the efforts of Senators Daschle and Baucus and Johnson of South Dakota, Wellstone, and others, and I am happy to be a cosponsor of the bill.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I intend to put into the Record a letter I sent to President Bush several weeks ago on the subject of having an economic summit meeting. I note that the President had a forum of some type in Crawford, TX, when he invited people who agreed with his fiscal policy to talk about how well the administration's policies are working. I believe we have significant economic difficulties in this country. The Federal budget deficits now continue to skyrocket. We have a budget that does not add up, a fiscal policy that does not make much sense. I think we ought to have an economic summit at which people of varying opinions come together and have a competition of ideas about what works and what does not, so that we can find ways to put our country back on track. I hope the President convenes this much-needed economic summit. (Mr. WELLSTONE assumed the chair.)

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson today in introducing this Missouri River Enhancement and Monitoring Act of 2002 and thank him for his efforts in working with me on this legislation. This bill will establish a program to conduct research on, and monitor the health of, the Missouri River to help recover threatened and endangered species, such as the pallid sturgeon and piping plover. This bill will enable those who are active in the Missouri River Basin to collect and analyze baseline data, as river operations change, so that we can monitor changes in the health of the river and in species recovery in future years. The program would also provide an analysis of the social and economic impacts along the river. And, it would establish a stakeholder group to make recommendations on the recovery of the Missouri River ecosystem. The bill establishes a cooperative working arrangement between state, regional federal, and tribal entities that are active in the Missouri River Basin. I look forward to working with all of the stakeholders in the Basin to implement this important legislation. I am especially pleased that this legislation is supported by a broad range of stakeholders, including the North Dakota State Water Commission, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, the North Dakota Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Three Affiliated Tribes, the Missouri River Natural Resources Committee, The Missouri River Basin Association, the South Dakota Game and Fish Department, American Rivers, and Environmental Defense. I am confident that this legislation will enjoy bipartisan support, because of its significance in helping to monitor and restore the health of this historic River. Lewis and Clark traveled on this River. This River also contributes to $80 million in recreation, fishing, and tourism benefits in the Basin. I look forward to holding hearings on this bill and hope that we will be able to pass it into law in the near future.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I was willing to yield ever so slightly because I have such limited time. Let me say this: I am going to speak postcloture, and I would be happy to engage in the debate. No one in the Senate really wants to debate trade very much. They want to simply say there are those of us who support fast track, and those of us who get it, who understand it, who see over the horizon, and who have a broader view of the world. And then there are, as Ambassador Zoellick suggests, the xenophobes and isolationists, the stooges who just don't see it. That is the thoughtless debate that occurs every time we talk about trade. But I will, in the postcloture period, ask a series of questions. I hope perhaps some colleagues will be here. I will ask, for example, about the issue of washed versus unwashed eggs with Europe, corn syrup with Mexico, and automobiles with China. We will see if there are people on the floor of the Senate who agree with the circumstances of our trade relationships. The problems are relentless, they are pervasive, and they continue. What we want to do is rush off and negotiate the next trade treaty before we solve any problems in the previous treaties. How can we tell the farmers of North Dakota that it is all right? That it doesn't matter that they have had a problem for 10 years of a monopoly in Canada shipping unfairly subsidized grain south? We want to do another treaty. The folks who produce America's beef, who 12 years after the beef agreement with Japan now have a 38.5-percent tariff on every pound of beef sent to Japan--how can we tell these people that it just doesn't matter? Yes, we are a leader in trade. Regrettably, we have been a leader without a backbone. We have refused to say to our trading partners, there is an admission price to the American marketplace, and that admission price is fair trade with respect to labor standards and a range of other issues. Most especially, from my standpoint, I am concerned about the issue of fundamental fairness. I mentioned that I did not support fast-track trade authority for President Clinton, didn't think he should have it. I don't think President Bush should have it. I also mentioned earlier, the last two experiences we have had with fast track, both NAFTA and GATT, have not turned out well for America. The agreement that went into conference came out of conference in much worse shape than it left the Senate. They essentially got rid of the Dayton-Craig amendment and put a placebo in place. They got rid of the transparency issue I raised. I want to talk about what they boast about with respect to this conference agreement. It provides assistance with health insurance. What that means is for those Americans who lose their jobs because of the next incompetently negotiated trade agreements, we will help pay their health insurance. That is going to be great news to people who will lose their jobs. It is safe to say not one man or woman in the Senate will lose their job because of this vote. Fast track will not cost any jobs here in the Senate. No Senator's job is threatened by this. It is also safe to say that those Americans who are working for companies that will be subject to unfair trade, because our trade negotiators want to negotiate the next agreement rather than fix the problems they have created in the past, are going to have little consolation with these provisions. If you lose your job, we give you health insurance. Well, maybe it would be better if they didn't lose their job. We expand coverage for secondary workers. If you are a secondary worker and you lose your job, we help you a bit. There is wage insurance for the older workers who lose their jobs: We will help you a bit. New benefits for farmers and ranchers: If you lose the farm and the ranch because of trade negotiations, we are willing to help you. It might be better just to negotiate trade agreements that are fair to our producers and say to our producers: This represents fair competition. You have to go compete. If you don't win, that is tough luck. But we have made the rules fair for you. You have to compete and win. That is not what we do here. Our trade negotiators don't do that. In negotiation after negotiation, we discover we don't have much of a backbone. Will Rogers once said that the United States of America has never lost a war and never won a conference. He surely was talking about our trade negotiators. They usually manage to lose in a week or two; sometimes it takes longer. I can't think of a trade negotiation in recent years that has enhanced this country's economic interests. How much time do I have?

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, I listened intently to my colleague and friend from Arizona. There is no disagreement on the proposition that I want the benefits of international trade to accrue to American citizens, consumers who go to the store and want to buy the best possible product at the best possible price. There is no question about the doctrine of comparative advantage, in which each country, doing that which it does best and trading with other countries, promotes efficiency. There is no question about that, and that should not be the subject of this debate. It is not that those of us who oppose fast track do not support free trade. But I want to tell you about the kind of trade I do not support. The most recent agreement that we negotiated in this country was with China. It was a bilateral agreement, prior to their membership in the WTO. Let me just take one small piece of that bilateral agreement with China and ask a question. Our negotiators negotiated with the Chinese in this bilateral agreement, and they agreed to the following: After a phase-in period, the United States would impose a 2.5-percent tariff on any automobiles manufactured in China shipped to the United States, and China would impose a 25-percent tariff on any United States automobiles shipped to China. I am wondering, who in this Chamber would think that is a reasonable deal? We say to China: China, you have a $70 billion trade surplus with us. We have a $70 billion trade deficit with you. And by the way, here are some new terms on automobile trade. If you decide to build automobiles and ship them to our country, and we want to ship cars to your country--you have 1.3 billion people--we agree you can charge 10 times the tariff on United States cars going into China. Who thinks that makes sense? Where do these negotiators come from? Do they go to a school somewhere, a school that fails to teach them the basics of how you negotiate and what a fair trade agreement is about? No one wants to discuss this. One of my colleagues said: I have half a notion to stay here and debate you. I said: Gosh, I wish you would. No one is interested in debating the issue of trade. There is the simplistic and thoughtless debate saying we are for free trade, we understand it, we see over the horizon, we understand the economy, and the rest of you are xenophobic stooges, and you don't know what you are talking about. That is the way the debate rages on the floor and in the Washington Post, with the same thoughtless drivel. I come from a State that has a lot of family farmers. We have to find a foreign home for over half of what we produce. I am the last person in the world who wants to retard the movement of goods around the world. I believe in trade. I believe in expanded trade. But on behalf of our farmers, I demand the trade relationships with other countries be fair. It doesn't matter to me whether it is wheat or corn or soybeans, if we are going to have a trade relationship with someone, and we are going to connect with somebody, I want it to be fair. So let me describe a bit what I mean about fairness. I mentioned Japanese beef. We ship a lot of Japanese cars into this country and good for us. If consumers want to buy them, that is good. They want access to that product. So I represent a lot of ranchers in North Dakota. They have a lot of beef to sell. Japan needs beef. So we negotiated a beef agreement with the country of Japan. Madam President, 12 years after the agreement was completed, every pound of hamburger, every pound of T-bone steak that goes into Japan now has a 38.5-percent tariff on it; 12 years after our agreement, we have a 38.5-percent tariff. Should we be shipping more T-bones to Tokyo? You bet your life we should. Why can't we? The tariff is too high. That is after our negotiators reached an agreement with them. Do our ranchers have a complaint? I think so; I believe so because the trade circumstances with respect to beef to Japan are not fair, and everybody knows it. Let me show a chart that shows the EU's import barrier to U.S. eggs. If you are an egg producer in this country, in the United States, it is standard to wash eggs before shipment. So if you go to the store and buy a carton of eggs and open the carton, that is what it is going to look like. It is something you might want to crack and eat. The European Union requires that imported eggs be unwashed, supposedly because their farmers are not in the habit of washing eggs. Therefore United States eggs cannot be sold in Europe at the retail level, because we wash our eggs. Is that a fair trade deal? If you were involved in selling eggs, do you think you would like what Europe is doing to us? I don't think so. I mentioned yesterday the issue of $100 million in United States beef that is banned in the European Union. We have a fairly significant trade deficit with Europe. You read the European press, they make it sound as if all of our cows have two heads--this grotesque creature we are trying to sell that is going to injure their consumers. So we took the Europeans to the WTO court, the tribunal, and we said it is unfair, the $100 million of United States beef we cannot get into Europe, and the WTO said: Yes, you are right. So they said: Europe, you are going to have to allow that United States beef in. Europe said: Go fly a kite. We don't intend to let United States beef into Europe. So our trade negotiators got real gutsy for once. Our trade negotiators screwed up all of their courage and they said: Look Europe, if you don't play fair with us, we are taking tough action against you. What did we do? We took action against them, by imposing tariffs on selected products. Do you know what EU products our negotiators chose to retaliate against? Our retaliation is on truffles, goose liver, and Roquefort cheese. That will scare the devil out of a trade adversary, won't it? If you have a trade relationship in which someone is unfair, you better watch out or we might take action against your goose liver or Roquefort cheese. Maybe I come from a small town and don't understand that, but I don't think that is going to strike fear in the heart of a trading partner who is being unfair to America. Let's talk about the issue of potato flakes to Korea. What if you are a potato grower in the Red River Valley and you want to get potato flakes to Korea from which they make snack food? There is a 70 percent tariff trying to get potato flakes into Korea. While we are on the subject of Korea, how about automobiles going into Korea? Last year, this country brought 618,000 Korean automobiles into our marketplace to be sold to the American consumer. That is good for Korea. Korea produces a pretty good car, and they ship them into the United States, and United States consumers buy them. Guess how many United States-manufactured cars got into Korea last year? It wasn't 618,000. It was 2,008. Why? Try to sell a Ford Mustang in Korea. They use all kinds of non-tariff trade barriers. This is trade in which the Koreans sell us 217 cars for every car we can sell in Korea--618,000 sold here, and 2,008 in Korea. Is that because we don't make good cars? No. Is it because Koreans don't want American cars sold in Korea? Yes. It is that simple. I mentioned stuffed molasses, which are used to evade U.S. tariffs on sugar. Brazilian sugar is sent to Canada. Then a Canadian company combines the sugar with the molasses. Then it comes into this country, and the sugar is unloaded. They get another load of sugar and bring it down with stuffed molasses in contravention of our trade law. It has been going on for a long period of time. We can't do a thing about it. Trade problem? Sure, it is. If you are a sugar beet grower, is that a problem? You bet. Is anybody about to fix it? No. Nobody cares. Actually, the Senate version of the trade bill had a provision that aimed to fix this problem. But, like most other things of value in the trade bill, it was dropped out in conference. There is instead a placebo provision that means virtually nothing. I mentioned a bit ago that China has this huge trade surplus with us, or we have a huge trade deficit with them. I noticed in the newspaper the other day that China is buying Airbuses from Europe. China has a lot of people. They need a lot of airplanes. The Airbus is deeply subsidized by the European governments. It is unfair competition for the Boeing Company, for example. What is the remedy for a United States airplane manufacturer when the European company that is deeply subsidized by the European governments goes to China and sells them Airbuses, at the same time that China has this huge trade surplus with us? We had a situation recently because of NAFTA. The administration says we must allow long-haul Mexican trucks into our country. Of course, the fact is that long-haul Mexican trucks are not inspected the way we inspect our trucks. Their drivers are not required to carry logbooks the way our drivers do. There is a lot of concern about safety when they come in and move around our country. They have been limited to a 20-mile distance from the border. Mexico said, apparently, that if we didn't allow long-haul Mexican trucks into our country, they were going to take action against us with respect to high-fructose corn syrup. I have news for the Mexicans. They have already taken action. We can't get high-fructose corn syrup into Mexico with any reasonable tariff because they are acting in contravention of our trade laws and agreements. The list is endless. I could go on for a long period. We have a trade agreement with Canada. Clayton Yeutter went to Canada and negotiated a trade agreement with Canada. This agreement essentially sold out the interests of our American farmers. I am sure he received something from Canada--perhaps greater access by the financial service community, or something. In any event, immediately after the trade agreement was negotiated with Canada, our farmers saw an avalanche of Canadian grain being sold in our country at unfairly subsidized prices by a monopoly controlled by what they call the Canadian Wheat Board. We can't do a thing about it. We sent investigators to Canada to get information about the prices at which they were selling the grain. They thumbed their noses at us and said: We don't intend to give you any information about the prices at which we are selling it in the United States. I rode up to the Canadian border with a farmer named Earl Jensen in a 12-year-old orange truck with a couple hundred bushels of durum wheat on the back, and we were stopped at the border despite the fact that all the way to the border we saw 18-wheel Canadian trucks coming into the country hauling Canadian wheat. That is the kind of thing that angers the American people about trade. We have a circumstance where we have this huge trade deficit. It is interesting. We talked about this in the debate. No one really wants to talk about this deficit at all. People just act as if it doesn't exist. People come out here and dance around for a while, talk about the wonders of global trade and how terrific it is, but they want to pretend it doesn't exist. There is this relentless griping about the trade deficit that is increasing year after year and that is hurting our country. We don't owe this money to ourselves as we do the budget deficit, we owe this money to other countries. This is a claim on our assets by other countries. In May, the trade deficit was $41.5 billion--just last month. And the trade ambassador has said that he is going to put our antidumping laws on the negotiating table. We have antidumping rules. They are not very well enforced. But we have them nonetheless. They are one of the few tools we have to fight unfair trade. And they are now on the negotiating table. There are discussions about their elimination. We are willing to get rid of them in future trade negotiations--in secret, because all these trade negotiations are in secret--willing to consider getting rid of our antidumping rules. We will be defenseless. We have a weakened 301, no section 22, and now we have antidumping rules on the table. So where is the remedy for unfair trade? Under this trade bill, the only remedy for those who lose their jobs because of these trade agreements is that we are willing to give you some health insurance-- not all of a it, but we are willing to pay 65 percent for some health insurance for you. Lose your jobs, and you'll get some trade adjustment assistance. You can go home and say to your spouse: Honey, I have lost my job. They are moving into Indonesia. They can find someone who works for 40 cents an hour. They don't have to have a manufacturing plant that is safe because they are not subject to all those darned OSHA rules. And they can dump the chemicals right in the streets, and they can pollute the air. They don't have to worry with that because there is no enforcement. And they can work 12-year-old kids for 12 hours a day, and nobody is going to say anything. Honey, I have lost my job, and it is going overseas. But, honey, there is good news here because the bill the Senate has been considering is going to get us a little health insurance. They have even extended it now to farmers and ranchers who lost their farms and ranches. They get a little trade adjustment assistance as well, when they lose their farms. Incidentally, they are also going to expand the training budget because they know we are going to lose some of these jobs. We are going to give some training to all the people forced out of their jobs. Just don't expect their new jobs to amount to much. Because good jobs are being driven out of this country by all these trade agreements. It is interesting to me that there is no one in the debate who wants to defend the practices I have just described. All they want to do is chant. You can go to the street corners and hear chanting as well. Normally they have drum rolls and symbols, and they chant. We have the same exercise when we talk about trade--this relentless chant: ``Free trade, global economy, free trade, global economy.'' Is there anyone in the Senate who wants to say: Yes, let us have expanded trade, but let us demand on behalf of this country that we have tried rules that are fair? This country got into a bad habit after the Second World War. We did it necessarily, and it was something which I would have supported if I had been here at that point. Just after the Second World War, we had a lot of countries flat on their backs. Trade policy for us was foreign policy. We said with all of these countries: Let us make concessions. Let us help them. We can do almost anything. We are the biggest, the best, the strongest, and we have the most. We can beat anybody in international trade competition with one hand tied behind our backs. So trade policy was then foreign policy. And that is fine. For a quarter of a century, our trade policy was foreign policy. But then, those who were flat on their back became shrewd, tough international competitors: Japan, Europe, and others. Yet our trade policy did not become trade policy or economic policy, it remained foreign policy. For the second 25 years after the Second World War, we began to see this problem, a problem of gripping, relentless trade deficits. With Japan, it has been a trade deficit that has continued virtually forever--year after year after year after year--because they want to protect their economy and keep United States goods out, to the extent they can, and they want access to our marketplace with their manufactured goods. And this country has said: Fine; that's a relationship that's fine with us. It is not fine with me, and should not be fine with others, whose principal interest ought to be the economic future of this country, whose principal interest ought to be to have trade agreements that are mutually beneficial to both trading partners. When I started talking, I talked about this Byzantine, twisted, perverted provision with China on automobiles. I did it for a reason. I recognize that we do not have a lot of automobile trade with China. China has 1.3 billion-plus people. One would expect, as the Chinese economy advances, that the opportunities to sell automobiles in China could be significant. But our negotiators, for reasons I could never understand, said: Oh, by the way, let's make a little deal. Just as one part, one paragraph, in a big, long trade agreement, here is what we will decide on automobiles: China, you have a big trade surplus with us, and we have a big deficit with you, but if we ever have any automobile trade between us, you can go ahead and impose a tariff that is 10 times higher on United States cars than we would impose on Chinese cars. We ought to find the person who agreed to that, and somehow put him out here on the Senate steps, and get a chair and sit beside him, and ask him to explain to us what school you go to, to learn that kind of nonsense, that kind of perverted sense of fairness. I could describe paragraphs in every trade agreement in the last 25 years that have the same absurdities, the same unwillingness to stand up for American producers and American jobs, not at the expense of others, but just for the benefit of ours. Somehow there is an embarrassment in this Chamber about standing up for this country's economic interests. Yes, it is in our economic interest to have a system in which U.S. consumers have access to lower priced goods from around the world. But it is not, and never will be, in our economic interest, if those consumers are out of work, if the jobs that provided the income that used to allow the consumers to take the goods off the shelf through their purchases have now gone to other countries because corporations, that at this point are no longer American citizens but international citizens, have decided they ought to produce where it is very inexpensive to produce and ship their goods to the established marketplace. That, inevitably, and, in my judgment, more significantly as the years go on, will erode our job base of good jobs. I am talking about manufacturing-sector jobs. No country will long remain a strong economic power, a world economic power, if it decimates its manufacturing base. Manufacturing is critical to our country's economy and to our long-term economic health. There is a fellow in North Dakota who goes to county fairs and performs for money, and his name is John Smith. He has an act that he takes to county fairs, and they pay him for it. He takes old cars--gets some old wreck--and then he gins up the engine somehow, and then he goes and he jumps four or five other cars in front of the bandstand, wherever the county fair is. He calls himself the Flying Farmer from Makoti. He lives in Makoti, ND, and he farms. So he has this act where he travels with these old cars and he calls himself the Flying Farmer. He is an interesting guy. He wanted to set the Guinness record in the ``Guinness Book of World Records.'' And he is now in the ``Guinness Book of World Records'' for driving in reverse for 500 miles, averaging 38 miles an hour. Now, you might wonder why I thought about the Flying Farmer from Makoti. I was thinking about going in reverse this morning, and I thought what better example of going in reverse than the Flying Farmer from Makoti and the Senate on international trade. Year after year after year, we go deeper and deeper and deeper in debt. The current account deficit is somewhere around $2 trillion at this point this year. When the year ends, we will be somewhere around $450 to $480 billion in merchandise trade deficit. And we have to pay somebody that, somebody living outside of our country. It injures our economy, it injures future economic activity, and yet no one really wants to talk much about it. We are going in reverse. We are not making progress. Despite all of the protests by those who think this is a wonderful thing, the evidence is in. With NAFTA, the last trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, we turned a small surplus with Mexico into a big deficit; we turned a moderate deficit with Canada into a big deficit. NAFTA was a disaster. We were promised that there would be 300,000 new American jobs coming from this trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. The fact is, we have lost somewhere around 700,000 jobs. We were told by the economists, who thought they knew what would happen with Mexico, that we would simply get the products of low- skilled jobs coming into this country as a result of NAFTA. The three largest imports from Mexico are automobiles, automobile parts, and electronics--all products of high-skilled jobs that used to exist in major centers of manufacturing in our country but now exist in Mexico. We are not making progress. We are losing ground. That is the reason I oppose giving fast-track trade authority to this President. To suggest that we ought to ignore the Constitution--and, yes, we ignore the Constitution when we do this. The Constitution says that the regulation of trade with other countries is the province of the Congress--the Congress. And a majority of the Senate says: we have not seen your next trade agreement yet. We know you will negotiate it without us. We know it will be negotiated in secret somewhere. But we agree in advance, so whatever you do, whenever you do it, wherever you do it, we will handcuff ourselves so we are unable to offer even one amendment to change one word when it comes back to the Senate. I think that is one of the goofiest propositions I have ever heard. It just makes no sense at all. Yet a pretty broad majority of the Senate agrees to it. Well, let me make a final point. The business community in this country and in this world have become international citizens. Multinational corporations do business all around the world. They do not get up in the morning and say: Look, my principal interest is the economy of the United States of America. That is not their principal interest. Their principal interest is to their shareholders. And their interest to their shareholders is to do, in international economic circumstances, the best they can to improve profits. If that means moving jobs from Pittsburgh to Indonesia, in order to take advantage of lower labor rates, and to avoid OSHA, and to avoid all the other things you have to comply with in this country, then that is what they do. The problem is, this country, as a leader in international trade, has not described what fair competition is. We have never described, in the new global economy, what is fair competition. The global economy has galloped forward, but the rules have not kept pace. It begs the question, for all of us, as a leader in world trade: What are the rules? What are the conditions? What is the admission price for the American economy? I said earlier, if a company decides that it wishes to access the lowest possible labor rate anywhere in the world, and takes its corporate jet, and circles the globe, and looks down to see where they can possibly do that, and discovers a place where they can hire 12- year-olds, and they can work them 12 hours a day, and they can pay them 14 cents an hour, is that fair? Then they ship the product of that labor to Fargo or to Denver or Fresno and put on it the store shelf, and someone says: Isn't that a wonderful thing? What a wonderful thing; you actually have a lower price for that product. In fact, some studies suggest that is not the case. The difference is made up in profit for the corporation, not lower prices for the consumer. But setting that aside, people say: Isn't that a wonderful thing? That is lower priced than I expected. Yes, that is good for the consumer, but it is also the case that the would-be consumer may well have lost his job because the production of that item no longer exists here. I am not suggesting we should have the manufacturing advantage or capability for all products. I believe the doctrine of comparative advantage makes sense. If there is a country that can do it better, more effectively, has the natural resources more available than we do, one would expect they would do that which they do best. We do that which represents a natural advantage for us, and we trade back and forth. But that is not the circumstance today. The natural economic advantage these days is instead a natural political advantage. A country says, our political advantage is we will allow you to hire kids. We will allow you to pay 20 cents an hour. We will allow you to dump your chemicals into the streams and into the air, and we will allow you to do this in a workplace that is not required to be safe. Those aren't economic advantages that somehow relate to natural advantages. Those are political advantages created by a government that says: We will not allow people to form unions or labor to collectively bargain or rules against children put in factories. Those are political judgments and political circumstances. There is no natural economic advantage there. My point is, we have to come to grips with this galloping globalism. We must do that in fairness to the American worker and to the American businesses. To do less than that means that we consign our economy to unfair competition in a dozen different areas. Americans depend on us to represent our best economic interests, not some notion of what the economic interest is for a corporation that does business in every country and has no special interest or recognition in our economy or our economic growth or our workers. I know we have a 30-hour postcloture period. Several of my colleagues will want to speak on this issue. I expect they will have significant votes for it today and those who vote for it will be back on the floor. I will be back on the floor of the Senate again with another chart, and we will talk about whether it is wise for the Senate, when it discovers that doing something isn't working, to continue doing it over and over and over again. Most people learn by repetition. When you repeat something that has failed, most people understand that they want to do it differently. That is not the case with fast track and with our current trade policy. I believe in expanded trade. I believe economies are strengthened by expanded trade. I believe our economy and other economies of the world are strengthened by expanded trade. I don't want to put up a wall around our country. I am not an isolationist. But I believe very strongly there needs to be voices raised demanding fair trade rules. Whether it is China, Japan, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Korea, or others with whom we have very large trade deficits, we have a right as Americans, as producers and as workers, to expect our Government will represent our economic interests in demanding fair trade rules. That has not been the case to date. I hope soon after this vote today, we will begin to see some effort on behalf of our country in demanding the rules of trade keep pace with the galloping pace of global trade. That is the only thing that will be fair to American workers and American companies. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. We will have a cloture vote this morning, and my expectation is that sufficient votes exist to have cloture. We will then have a postcloture period in which I will speak at greater length about the specifics of unfair trade. Let me say this: The only bright spot for me for some long while in international trade was Mickey Kantor, trade ambassador some while ago, who in 1 year took action against Canada for engaging in horribly unfair trade against American farmers. I happen to like current trade ambassador Zoellick. I think he is a charming fellow. This is not about personalities, it is about strategy. The fact is, this Senate is going to make a serious mistake by deciding it will tie its hands and it will agree to tie its hands prior to negotiation of a new trade agreement so that if and when a trade agreement comes here for approval by the Senate, we agree not to change a word. Think of the difference that would have existed had we been able to change a few words in the United States-Canada trade agreement; think of what it would have meant for tens of thousands of American farmers if we had been able to say: We demand fairness in this agreement. But we couldn't. That trade agreement was negotiated, as all of them are, in secret. The next trade agreement will be negotiated the same way. We will come back 5 years from now, and I will be back on the floor of the Senate, if I am here, showing with another chart that we are drowning in red ink and jobs are leaving and opportunity is lost. We will have people saying: We ought to do the same thing. We ought to repeat the same failures. It is hard for me to understand how repeating something that doesn't work advances America's interests. This must be the only body in the world that has grown men and women adding 2 and 2 and getting 5 and complimenting each other on their math skills. It defies logic, in my judgment, to believe that this strategy enhances America's economic interests. I yield the floor. Cloture Motion

Mr. DORGAN. Of course. I have very limited time. You have used all your time.

Mr. DORGAN. No. We have a vote.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first of all, I appreciate that both sides should have equal time. I enjoyed listening to my colleague from Oklahoma. I might say, however, I do not believe that Chairman Greenspan would suggest we should promote trade deficits. I think he suggests we promote international trade. I am all for that. Sign me up. Count me as one who believes we ought to expand international trade. I think that is healthy. Good for our economy and good for the economies of those with whom we trade, provided the trade is fair and reasonably balanced. We have a trade deficit with China that is $60 billion to $70 billion, and headed south. We have a trade deficit with Japan that is between $50 billion and $60 billion--slightly more than that, as a matter of fact. We have a trade deficit with Mexico and Canada that is becoming significant. And we have a trade deficit with Europe. It is interesting how all of the discussion this morning has carefully avoided the fact that the current trade policy they espouse isn't working. The current trade policy, last month, produced a $41.5 billion trade deficit--just last month. That is a deficit that will be a yoke on the shoulders of every American. It is relentless, it is increasing, and everyone who speaks in favor of this trade policy carefully and studiously ignores it. They just do not want to talk about the fact that it isn't working. Let me, once again, put up a chart that shows what is happening in international trade. Our country is drowning in trade deficits. The next line would be up here off the chart. The merchandise trade deficit is exploding. Everyone in the Senate knows that. It emanates from a trade strategy that is, in my judgment, weak kneed, a trade strategy in which we lack backbone and will. Our country refuses--refuses--to say to China or Japan or Europe or Canada or Mexico that we demand some reciprocity and fair trade. We just refuse to do it. We have this huge trade deficit with China. So China wants to buy airplanes, and goes over and buys airplanes from Airbus, which is heavily subsidized by the European governments. Is that fair? It is fair to an American producer of airplanes? It is fair to Boeing? You know it is not fair. We ought to say to China: Look, you want to sell us all of your trousers and shirts and shoes and trinkets, and all the things you manufacture in our marketplace; good for you. Our marketplace is open to you, by all means. But understand this: When you need something we produce, you ought to be buying from us. That is the way trade ought to work.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first of all, this debate, if it is like most debates on fast track, will not be a very thoughtful debate. There is a relentless chanting about free trade and the global economy, but no discussion about what is really happening in trade. I believe in expanded trade. I believe expanded trade helps our economy and helps economies around the world. I am not someone who believes we should put walls around our country and try to keep other goods out of our country. I do believe, however, our country has a right to be a leader in demanding and insisting on fair trade. That has not been the case for several decades. I will talk a bit about that. In October 2001, our trade Ambassador, Mr. Zoellick--a man I like-- speaking to a business group in Chicago, described opponents of trade promotion authority as ``xenophobes and isolationists.'' That is fairly typical of the prevailing view on trade. There is a perception that this debate has two camps: The camp that is able to see over the horizon, they get it, they understand it, they understand the global economy, and they understand all of the issues; and then there are the others, xenophobic, isolationist stooges who cannot and will not understand. The Senate is preparing to give the administration the power to negotiate trade agreements in secret, and bring them back to Congress for very limited debate. Congress will have in place a procedure that will prevent the Senate from ever changing even one word of the agreement. In other words, Congress signs itself up to say: Handcuff us. Handcuff us so we cannot change a word in the next trade agreement you bring back. We understand we will not be part of the negotiation, we understand we will not be in the room, we will not even know where they take place, but we agree beforehand that whatever you bring back to us, we will not change a word. Had I been able to change a word of the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement, we would not have the problem with grain trade with Canada we have had for a decade. When that trade agreement came back to the Senate, I could not change one word because Congress passed fast track. Trade promotion authority is a euphemism for what used to be known as fast track. It is Congress handcuffing itself, saying: Whatever you negotiate, wherever you negotiate it, we promise not to offer one amendment to change one word of the trade agreement. There are people who will sign up for almost anything. I saw in the paper a while back that the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile was advertising for a driver. The Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, which we have seen in clips, needed a driver, and 900 college graduates applied. I thought to myself, people will sign up for almost anything, won't they? Nine hundred college graduates aspire to drive the Weinermobile. Then I see people signing up for the proposition that the Congress ought to handcuff itself, in advance, before a trade agreement is negotiated in secret in some location we do not yet know, and I see people say: Sign me up, I think that is a good deal. Let me describe the circumstances in which we find ourselves after a barrelful of this trade strategy. This chart represents red ink, trade deficits. Today is Thursday. Today, the American people and our Government, our country, will incur a $1.4 billion deficit--just in this one day. Today, every day, 7 days a week, our trade deficit is relentless, and it increases at a relentless pace. The deficit for this year will go off the chart, by the way. That is a trade deficit we owe not to ourselves, as we do with the budget deficit, it is a trade deficit we owe to other countries. We have people who think this strategy works. Would this be malpractice in medicine if a doctor prescribed medicine and it did not work, and he prescribed it again and it did not work, and he said, let's keep prescribing the same medicine that does not work? How about a football team that calls the same plays despite the fact it does not work? That is exactly what we are doing in international trade. The same people made the same promises then that they are making now: If we can just do more of the same, our country will be better off. Total nonsense. The last big debate we had was NAFTA--United States, Canada and Mexico. Prior to that debate, we had a very small trade surplus with Mexico. We had a surplus with Mexico and a reasonably modest trade deficit with Canada. We had people promising the Moon: If we just do this, if we sign up for the NAFTA agreement, if you let us negotiate it in secret--if you allow us to do that, we will add 300,000 new jobs in the United States of America. Total nonsense. Here is what happened after NAFTA: A trade surplus with Mexico turned into a very large deficit; a modest trade deficit with Canada turned into a huge trade deficit with Canada. People said: Well, if you just sign up to this, we will import the skills of low-skill labor from Mexico; that is what we intend to have happen. Do you know what the three largest imports from Mexico are? Electronics, automobiles, and automobile parts--all the product of high-skill labor. So the deficit explodes. Now we have a very large combined deficit with our two trading partners on the south and north of us, and we have people in the Senate who said: Boy, this is really working. What a great deal for our country. I graduated from a small school, a high school class of nine in my senior class. I know we did not have all the advanced mathematics some other people had, but this surely must be the only venue in America where grown men and women add 2 and 2 and get 5 and compliment each other on their math skills. In this morning's newspaper, there are reports about anemic economic growth, and worries about a double dip recession. According to economists, the trade deficit has done a lot to reduce our economic growth to just 1.8 percent. The fact is, this trade deficit matters, and we are getting clobbered by it. It ties an anvil to the neck of this country's economy. And we have people coming to the floor of the Senate saying: let's do more of the same; let's do much more of what is not working. I, for the life of me, cannot understand that. Postcloture, I am going to give a speech that describes the details of all of this and ask the question: Why are we all so interested in having the next treaty negotiated, or the next trade agreement negotiated, before even one problem is fixed? Let me give you some examples of problems, even if I do not describe them all now. How about eggs to Europe, high-fructose corn syrup to Mexico, automobiles to China, automobiles to Korea, potato flakes to Korea, unfairly subsidized grain from Canada, beef to Japan, flour to Europe? I can go on, and I will go, on at some length about each of those. How about stuffed molasses from Canada? That is an interesting one, stuffed molasses. Brazilian sugar is sent to Canada and then mixed with liquid molasses, put in a container, and shipped into this country in contravention of our trade laws. They take the sugar out of the molasses, send the molasses back to Canada, and everything is as it was before, except we now have Brazilian sugar in our market in contravention of our trade laws and you cannot do a blessed thing about it. When the trade bill left the Senate, it contained a provision that fixed this problem. The bill that came back out of conference essentially dropped this provision. But that is typical of virtually everything in this bill that left the Senate with some decent provisions and came back here washed clean of those provisions. There is a company in Canada. It is called Methanex. It is a company that makes MTBE, a fuel additive. California has decided it is going to discontinue the use of MTBE in fuel because it ends up in the ground water. The fact is, it poisons people. You have to get it out of the ground water, so you have to stop using it in fuel. So when California decides on behalf of the safety of its citizens to stop using MTBE, a fuel additive that is now showing up in their water supply, guess what. The Canadian manufacturer of that product takes action in the WTO against the United States for violating trade laws. So a State that tries to protect its citizens from a poison going into the water supply is now being sued, under our trade agreement, by a Canadian company. Guess what. The NAFTA dispute tribunal is secret. They are going to shut the door, lock the door, and in a closed room somewhere--where we will not be told--they make a decision about whether we have the right to protect our citizens. I offered an amendment on this bill here in the Senate. A wide bipartisan majority of Senators voted for it. It said: Those dispute resolutions must be opened to the public. America needs to see them. Let's have the disinfectant of sunlight on those trade disputes. That makes sense, doesn't it? Except the trade bill came back from conference with that stripped out. The bill also came back from conference without the Dayton-Craig amendment, which I cosponsored. The Dayton-Craig amendment said if you are going to negotiate a trade treaty and weaken the laws that protect us against unfair trade, then we deserve to have a separate vote on it. Do you know what they did? They stripped that out and they said: What you can do is you can have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution. We can have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution right now. That doesn't mean anything. To offer this kind of placebo is an insult. You are either going to stand up for this country's interests or you are not. If you decide you are not going to stand up for this country's interests, just say so. Don't play a game with it. The Dayton-Craig amendment ought to be in this piece of legislation. The amendment I offered on transparency ought to be in this piece of legislation. Amendments dealing with child protection and child labor issues ought to be in this legislation--and it is not, despite the fact that at its roots it is bad legislation. We ought not handcuff ourselves. We should not preclude ourselves from offering one amendment to a treaty that has not yet been negotiated at a time and place not yet described; a treaty in which the negotiations are not open to the public. We in the Senate agree we will not offer one amendment; in fact, we will prohibit it. Has anybody read the Constitution lately? That is not what the Constitution says. People refuse to stand up on the floor of the Senate and say: On behalf of our producers we demand fair trade. On behalf of farmers, steelworkers, textile workers, we are willing to compete. Yes, we want competition, absolutely. Bring them on. We are willing to compete. But we demand fair competition. If it is not fair, we say to those who want to ship their trousers and shirts and shoes and trinkets to us, ship them to Nigeria or Zambia and see how fast they sell. Say to Korea, that sent 630,000 cars into our marketplace and we are allowed only 2,800 cars into Korea: Korea, ship your cars to Zambia. See how many you sell. If you want to keep shipping Hyundais and Daewoos to the American marketplace, then open your market to American automobiles. It is very simple. I am going to talk more about this during the postcloture period. But my question is very simple: When will the House and Senate stand up for American producers? No, not for an advantage for them, just to demand basic fairness for workers and producers in this country. Just to demand basic fairness. When will we take action? I said before, maybe if there is a fast track urge around here, maybe if deep in the breasts of people around here they have some urge to do something on fast track, we should pass a piece of legislation that says the only fast track you have, Mr. Ambassador, is to put on fast track the solution to our trade problems. Fix a few problems before you negotiate a new trade agreement, just fix a few problems, then come back here and tell us you have fixed a few, and then we will work with you. Understand what is going to happen today. We will have a debate that is never at the center of the issue. We will have a vote. We will vote cloture. Then tomorrow, after the bill is passed, the President will talk about how wonderful it is that he has this trade promotion authority, which is fast track. People in Congress will talk about how wonderful it is because they understand the global economy and how important this is. It is all sheer nonsense, and they know it. I hope tomorrow morning someone will address this question: Why is it when things are not working, you want to do more of it? Why is it you want to do more of that which does not work? Just describe for one moment why you think something that hurts this country is something that we ought to continue. Let me finish as I started. My speech, especially the speech I will give later where I will go into a lot of specifics, will be misinterpreted, because it always is, as someone who is a xenophobe isolationist who doesn't believe in free trade. I believe in expanded trade. I believe trade promotes opportunity for our country and for others. But I, by God, insist on fair trade for American workers and producers, and I do not believe that after fighting for 100 years in this country for the right to organize, for people dying in the streets for the right to organize in a labor force, for the right to have a safe workplace, for the right not to employ children, 10- and 12-year- old children in coal mines and in factories, for the right to a decent wage--after fighting for those things for a century, I do not believe we ought to construct an economic system where companies can pole-vault over all of that in just a nanosecond and say, ``I renounce my American citizenship, let me become a citizen of Bermuda and put my jobs in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh,'' and not have to worry about all the things we fought about for a century. Fair is fair. There is a price for admission to the American marketplace. You cannot have a 12-year-old kid, pay him 12 cents an hour, work 12 him hours a day, and ship the product to Pittsburgh or Fargo or Los Angeles and call that fair trade. It not fair to America's workers and or producers. This fast-track trade authority for a trade agreement that has not yet been negotiated is, in my judgment, an aberration. It ignores the precepts of the consultation about international trade. In my judgment, because of what has happened in recent years, the evidence is clear that it also hurts our country. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we have a vote scheduled. I will yield on my time for a very brief question.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add 3 minutes to my time.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson today in introducing this Missouri River Enhancement and Monitoring Act of 2002 and thank him for his efforts in working with me on this legislation. This bill will establish a program to conduct research on, and monitor the health of, the Missouri River to help recover threatened and endangered species, such as the pallid sturgeon and piping plover. This bill will enable those who are active in the Missouri River Basin to collect and analyze baseline data, as river operations change, so that we can monitor changes in the health of the river and in species recovery in future years. The program would also provide an analysis of the social and economic impacts along the river. And, it would establish a stakeholder group to make recommendations on the recovery of the Missouri River ecosystem. The bill establishes a cooperative working arrangement between state, regional federal, and tribal entities that are active in the Missouri River Basin. I look forward to working with all of the stakeholders in the Basin to implement this important legislation. I am especially pleased that this legislation is supported by a broad range of stakeholders, including the North Dakota State Water Commission, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, the North Dakota Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Three Affiliated Tribes, the Missouri River Natural Resources Committee, The Missouri River Basin Association, the South Dakota Game and Fish Department, American Rivers, and Environmental Defense. I am confident that this legislation will enjoy bipartisan support, because of its significance in helping to monitor and restore the health of this historic River. Lewis and Clark traveled on this River. This River also contributes to $80 million in recreation, fishing, and tourism benefits in the Basin. I look forward to holding hearings on this bill and hope that we will be able to pass it into law in the near future.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, earlier this year we enacted a bold new campaign finance reform bill. After years of debate and delay, the Congress passed and the President signed this far-reaching legislation, known as McCain-Feingold. This new law eliminates the large ``soft money'' contributions from our campaign finance system and it expanded the role that some individuals can play by raising the individual campaign contribution limits. But there is one critical area that the McCain-Feingold bill didn't address, one important problem that the new law doesn't solve: how to give low- and middle-income families an incentive to contribute to the candidate of their choice. Today, I am introducing a bill with my colleague from Virginia, Senator Warner, that will do just that. It will empower millions of working Americans to become engaged in our political system, by providing a tax credit to those who donate money to congressional candidates. As campaigns become more and more expensive, the number of small contributors is actually decreasing. The current campaign finance system is becoming dominated by big dollar contributors. This is not healthy for our campaigns and it is not good for our democracy. My bill would make middle income Americans more able to donate to candidates. Specifically, my bill would provide a maximum $400 tax credit to married couples earning up to $120,000 for their campaign contributions. For singles with income up to $60,000, the tax credit would apply to contributions up to $200. This credit will provide a dollar for dollar offset for contributions, an incentive that could encourage the vast majority of working families to consider contributions to the candidates of their choice. This is not a new idea. This type of credit was a part of our tax system for more than a decade in the 1970s and 1980s. It has been a part of many campaign finance reform proposals over the years, proposals that have been introduced and supported by both Democrats and Republicans. And this policy proposal is the focus of a new study by the American Enterprise Institute, AEI, which concluded that this approach would help to elevate small donors from the supporting role that they now play. So, our proposal has been successful in the past, and it has had broad support from both parties over the past thirty years. Participation in the political process is key to a strong democracy. This bill will help broaden participation and will provide an incentive for more Americans to be included in political campaigns. That is healthy for our form of government. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, earlier this year we enacted a bold new campaign finance reform bill. After years of debate and delay, the Congress passed and the President signed this far-reaching legislation, known as McCain-Feingold. This new law eliminates the large ``soft money'' contributions from our campaign finance system and it expanded the role that some individuals can play by raising the individual campaign contribution limits. But there is one critical area that the McCain-Feingold bill didn't address, one important problem that the new law doesn't solve: how to give low- and middle-income families an incentive to contribute to the candidate of their choice. Today, I am introducing a bill with my colleague from Virginia, Senator Warner, that will do just that. It will empower millions of working Americans to become engaged in our political system, by providing a tax credit to those who donate money to congressional candidates. As campaigns become more and more expensive, the number of small contributors is actually decreasing. The current campaign finance system is becoming dominated by big dollar contributors. This is not healthy for our campaigns and it is not good for our democracy. My bill would make middle income Americans more able to donate to candidates. Specifically, my bill would provide a maximum $400 tax credit to married couples earning up to $120,000 for their campaign contributions. For singles with income up to $60,000, the tax credit would apply to contributions up to $200. This credit will provide a dollar for dollar offset for contributions, an incentive that could encourage the vast majority of working families to consider contributions to the candidates of their choice. This is not a new idea. This type of credit was a part of our tax system for more than a decade in the 1970s and 1980s. It has been a part of many campaign finance reform proposals over the years, proposals that have been introduced and supported by both Democrats and Republicans. And this policy proposal is the focus of a new study by the American Enterprise Institute, AEI, which concluded that this approach would help to elevate small donors from the supporting role that they now play. So, our proposal has been successful in the past, and it has had broad support from both parties over the past thirty years. Participation in the political process is key to a strong democracy. This bill will help broaden participation and will provide an incentive for more Americans to be included in political campaigns. That is healthy for our form of government. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, in the coming days I assume there will be a lot of suspender-snapping, back-thumping, chortling, and crowing about the new fast track trade agreement that was announced in the weekend press. There was a conference in the House and Senate. They came out with a new trade agreement. The moniker is trade promotion authority. It is a fancy way of saying fast-track trade authority for President Bush. I didn't support fast track trade authority for President Clinton, and I don't support it for President Bush. This is not a victory for our country. I assume, this week, because the conference report has passed the House, it will come to the Senate. We will have speeches by people wearing dark suits who talk about how wonderful this is for our country, what a wonderful thing it is that we now have fast-track trade authority. So some of our trade negotiators can go overseas somewhere, go into a room, close the door, lock it, keep the public out, and negotiate in secret a new trade agreement, and then come back to the Congress and say: Here it is. Take it or leave it. No amendments. Up or down. No changes. The people who apparently believe in this do not believe in the first law of holes; that is, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. They believe, if you find yourself in a hole, keep digging, look for more shovels. Let me talk for a moment about where we are with our trade deficits. This chart shows the record trade deficits we have seen over the past decade. When the year 2002 figures are posted, they will be way off the chart up here: about a $480 billion trade deficit in goods. That is money we owe to others, money we owe to people outside this country. They will have a future claim on America's income. This is very serious for our country. Yet we have people walking around here saying: We just need to do more of the same. One of the more recent trade agreements we did was NAFTA. They promised us hundreds of thousands of new jobs, if we melded the economies of the United States and Mexico, for trade purposes. I have a chart that shows what has happened as a result of NAFTA: 700,000 jobs lost. Incidentally, prior to NAFTA, we had a very small trade surplus with Mexico. After NAFTA, we turned that small surplus into a huge deficit. We had a modest trade deficit with Canada. It turned into a very large deficit. So we have this very large trade deficit now with Canada and Mexico, and people say: Gosh, that is wonderful; isn't it? No, it is not wonderful. It is moving in the wrong direction. It is not that I don't believe in the global economy and the ability of nations and businesses to exchange goods and services back and forth. I studied economics, taught economics for a while, and understand the doctrine of comparative advantage: Doing that which you do best, and trading with others who do what they do best. All of that makes sense to me. But I also think the rules have to be fair, and open markets have to be opened. The rules have to be transparent and fair. And they are not. If I might just give some examples of these rules and the problems with the rules. I use, often, the example of automobile trade with Korea. Korea is a good friend of the United States. South Korea has been an ally of ours for some long while. We have a trading relationship with Korea. But let me show you what has happened between the United States and Korea in one area of trade. Last year, the Koreans shipped 618,000 cars into the United States-- Hyundais, Daewoos--Korean cars. So 618,000 Korean cars came here from Korea, and we were able to ship Korea 2,800 cars; in other words, 217 to 1. Is it because our cars are bad cars? No, that is not it. It is because if you try to ship a Ford Mustang to Korea, they will throw up all kinds of trade barriers. They just do not want United States cars shipped to Korea. They want only for Korean cars to access the American marketplace. Is that fair? No, it is not fair. Does anybody in this country have the backbone and nerve to stand up to another country and say to them: Look, we like you a lot. You are allies of ours. We are good friends. But I will tell you what. In international trade, we have a notion of fairness. Open your markets to us, and we will open our markets to you. But if you close your markets to the United States, ship your cars to Nigeria or perhaps Iran, and see how quickly they sell. Let's talk about beef exports to Europe. Go to Europe. The Presiding Officer has been in Europe. Pick up a newspaper in Europe--I have been there this year--and you read about European trade restrictions on U.S. beef, allegedly because of hormones. The way they picture it, it is as if we are shipping them beef that came from cows with two heads. That is the way it is portrayed in the European press. They keep United States beef out of Europe. So our country actually tried to do something about that. We said: Look, you either allow United States beef into Europe or we are going to take action against you. So, finally, a little bit of backbone from our trade representatives, right? Finally, we have some nerve. Finally, we have the good old American spirit and we are going to stand up for our producers. We couldn't get beef into Europe, so we took action. Our trade representatives filed a case at the WTO against the Europeans for their restrictions on our beef. The WTO actually ruled on it, which itself is a surprise. The WTO said: Europe, you are wrong. You must allow United States beef into Europe. Europe said: It doesn't matter. We are not going to do it. So our trade negotiators said: We are going to take action against the Europeans. Do you know what we are going to do? We are going to retaliate by imposing tariffs on European truffles, goose livers, and Roquefort cheese. Now, that will strike fear in any country, won't it? They will not allow our beef in Europe, but we are going to make it tough for them. We are going to take action against truffles, goose livers, and Roquefort cheese. Good for us. When, on Earth, will we have the nerve to say to other countries, we demand--we insist--on fair trade? Twelve years ago we reached an agreement with Japan on beef. All the trade negotiators celebrated as if they just won the 100-yard dash in the Olympics, as if they were all wearing gold medals because we reached a trade agreement with Japan on beef. But 12 years later, every single pound of American beef going into Japan still bears a 38.5- percent tariff. Try to send T-bones to Tokyo, a 37.5-percent tariff--every pound of beef. We have a $60 to $70 billion trade deficit with Japan, yet we cannot get beef into Japan without a tariff near 40 percent. It doesn't make any sense to me. This issue goes on and on. In my part of the country, we face an avalanche of unfairly subsidized Canadian grain coming in from a monopoly called the Canadian Wheat Board. We can't do a thing about it because the last trade agreement that came through here limited our remedies under section 301. We don't do a thing about it, so this grain floods into our country from Canada. It is unfair. Our Canadian friends, they are good friends of ours, but they are not playing fair with respect to trade and grain. So U.S. wheat producers, family farmers, put together the information to file a complaint. They won the complaint. The U.S. Trade Representative judged that the Canadians, through the Canadian Wheat Board, are engaged in unfair trade. What is the remedy? Well, apparently, according to our trade ambassador, the remedy is just to say that the Canadians ought to really watch it. No tariffs. No effective actions. No sanctions. Just: You had better watch it. That is not the way to deal with international trade. When this so-called fast-track authority agreement was reached in conference, the committee of jurisdiction issued a memorandum describing what they did in conference and what a terrific deal it is. Trade adjustment assistance: They tripled it. That provides assistance with health insurance for displaced workers. So if you lose your job because of these trade agreements, guess what? We are going to exchange for your job some health insurance for you. Boy, that is quite a deal, isn't it? We are going to expand coverage to secondary workers who are affected by a firm moving overseas. These trade agreements make it easier to move a firm overseas, so if you lose your job, and if you are not a primary worker but a secondary worker, we are going to cover you for the first time. That is going to make you feel really good as you go home and tell your family: I have lost my job. But guess what. I am a secondary worker, and I think I am covered with some health insurance for a while. I think I am going to get a little health insurance here. There is a pilot program for providing wage insurance for older workers, realizing the difficulty for older workers to change careers. Why would you to have change a career? Because your job just went to Sri Lanka or Bangladesh or Indonesia, where they are going to do for 20 cents an hour what you did for a living wage in this country. There is a new benefit for farmers and ranchers who have been losing money hand over fist because of price collapses. If they lose money now because of these new trade agreements, there is a little help for them. Somebody takes their market away, we give them just a little bit of help in trade adjustment assistance. Lose your job? Lose your farm? Lose your ranch? Guess what. We will help you out a little. The issue, according to these folks, is not about fair trade. The fight is about how can we provide assistance to Americans who are going to lose their jobs. For me, the question is this: What are the elements of fair trade? What is price for admission to the American marketplace? We fought for a century about fair labor standards, about not having children go down in coal mines, and not having children work in factories, about requiring safe workplaces, about a minimum wage, about the right to organize. Then some companies decided: We can skip all of that. We can pole vault over all those things. We can hire someone in Indonesia and pay them 24 cents an hour to make shoes. We don't have to worry about all those things we had to worry about in the United States. When we in the Senate were debating the current fast track bill in May, the Presiding Officer offered an amendment which I cosponsored, the Dayton-Craig amendment. It said: If in the next negotiation, there is any attempt to weaken the remedies for American producers, countervailing duties, any number of remedies to take action against unfair trade, if that is the case, there is going to be a separate vote in the Congress on that. The amendment passed in the Senate by a wide, bipartisan vote. Sixty one Senators voted for it. But when the bill got to conference, the provision got dropped, just got dropped. Instead, we got the right to do a sense-of-the-Senate vote. Well, thank you very much. You could do that before, and the new provision does nothing to defend our trade laws. It doesn't mean anything. If you just like to be here and put your suit and necktie on to vote for the heck of it, be our guest, come and do it, but this doesn't mean anything. They dropped an effective provision from the Senate version of the trade bill, one that would have helped producers in this country. They also dropped my amendment that said on investor dispute resolutions in NAFTA, proceedings must be open, they must be transparent. The door must be open. The public must see it. Now it is done in secrecy. They dropped my amendment. They dropped anything that was good. Then they put a sort of chocolate coating on things that were bad, sent it out here, and said: Hope that tastes good. Well, it doesn't taste good. This doesn't make any sense to us. It is interesting, there is only one view of trade that you can embrace these days. We have the largest trade deficit in history; last month over $41 billion--last month alone. A lot of major papers won't run a piece on the trade deficit on their op-ed page because there is only one view on their op-ed pages: You are either for global trade or you are against it. If you are against it, you are some sort of xenophobic isolationist stooge who just doesn't get it. Everybody else sees over the horizon. Those who oppose fast track don't. That is one of the most thoughtless approaches to a trade debate I can imagine. We will have a lengthier discussion on this, this week. I will have much more to say. Let me say again, I believe expanded trade is helpful to this country provided expanded trade is fair trade. We have been victimized in so many ways by so many trade agreements--recently, NAFTA and the WTO. You name it, I will show you the trade agreement that has expanded our trade deficit, hurt our producers, moved our jobs overseas, and nobody seems to care very much. Do you hear one peep on the floor of the Senate about the largest trade deficit in history? Just one? I don't hear a thing. Yet it hurts this country. It is going to cause this country serious economic problems in the future. I have so much more to say today, and so little time to say it. I want the Senator from Alaska to have the opportunity to speak for the last 5 minutes. So when this legislation comes to the floor of the Senate, I will speak at greater length later in the week. In the meantime, suffice it to say, some of us don't celebrate as much as others when they talk about the ingredients of this conference report on fast track. This is not advancing our country's interest. It is it not fair to producers and to workers. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I believe the Senator from Alaska would like to use the last 5 minutes. I ask unanimous consent that he be recognized for the final 5 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today, along with Senators Roberts, Conrad, Johnson and Brownback, I am introducing legislation to clarify Congressional intent regarding minor oilseed loan rates in the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act, FSRIA, of 2002. In early June, the United States Department of Agriculture incorrectly interpreted the intent of the new farm bill when the Farm Service Agency arbitrarily announced a wide range of minor oilseed loan rates. For some crops, the loan rate increased substantially, while for others, the rates plunged. Not once during the farm bill debate was there ever discussion of splitting apart minor oilseed loan rates. In fact, the minor oilseed industry and farmers alike anticipated a county-level increase in loan rates from $9.30 to $9.60/cwt. The announcement by the Farm Service Agency caught virtually everyone in the agriculture community by surprise. This legislation is intended to correct this misinterpretation of the new farm bill, and to prevent what will certainly be extreme acreage shifts among these crops in the coming years should these rates be allowed to stand. These acreage shifts will destroy segments of the minor oilseed industry that have been painstakingly developed over a number of years. For instance, already, users of the oil derived from oil sunflowers anticipate supply shortages next year and have indicated they may remove sunflower oil from their product mix. Conversely, incentives caused by the much higher confectionery sunflower loan rate could deluge USDA with massive loan forfeitures of low quality confectionery sunflowers if farmers simply grow for the loan rate rather than a quality crop that has a market. The legislation amends the new farm bill by simply--and redundantly-- listing each minor oilseed's loan rate separately. The legislation also reinstates the crambe and sesame seed loan rates that were eliminated by USDA. This legislation should not be needed. USDA could easily repeal the current announcement of minor oilseed loan rates in favor of rates consistent with this legislation and the new farm bill, as I and my colleagues have asked in recent letters on this issue. I request unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today, along with Senators Roberts, Conrad, Johnson and Brownback, I am introducing legislation to clarify Congressional intent regarding minor oilseed loan rates in the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act, FSRIA, of 2002. In early June, the United States Department of Agriculture incorrectly interpreted the intent of the new farm bill when the Farm Service Agency arbitrarily announced a wide range of minor oilseed loan rates. For some crops, the loan rate increased substantially, while for others, the rates plunged. Not once during the farm bill debate was there ever discussion of splitting apart minor oilseed loan rates. In fact, the minor oilseed industry and farmers alike anticipated a county-level increase in loan rates from $9.30 to $9.60/cwt. The announcement by the Farm Service Agency caught virtually everyone in the agriculture community by surprise. This legislation is intended to correct this misinterpretation of the new farm bill, and to prevent what will certainly be extreme acreage shifts among these crops in the coming years should these rates be allowed to stand. These acreage shifts will destroy segments of the minor oilseed industry that have been painstakingly developed over a number of years. For instance, already, users of the oil derived from oil sunflowers anticipate supply shortages next year and have indicated they may remove sunflower oil from their product mix. Conversely, incentives caused by the much higher confectionery sunflower loan rate could deluge USDA with massive loan forfeitures of low quality confectionery sunflowers if farmers simply grow for the loan rate rather than a quality crop that has a market. The legislation amends the new farm bill by simply--and redundantly-- listing each minor oilseed's loan rate separately. The legislation also reinstates the crambe and sesame seed loan rates that were eliminated by USDA. This legislation should not be needed. USDA could easily repeal the current announcement of minor oilseed loan rates in favor of rates consistent with this legislation and the new farm bill, as I and my colleagues have asked in recent letters on this issue. I request unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. We do not have perfect solutions, but we must in the next day or two make progress to get this bill completed so that we can go to conference with the House and make prescription drugs available to senior citizens, especially in the Medicare Program, and also begin to find a way to bring prescription drug prices down for all of us. I appreciate the work the Senator from Michigan has done. She has done in her leadership position a lot of work on this issue, and I deeply appreciate it.