Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, not only do I not object, I concur.

Mr. GRAMM. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, I am sorry, we were having a conference in the cloakroom and I didn't hear.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Twenty-two hours?

Mr. GRAMM. Twenty-three hours. So we have ample time, if the Senator wants to talk about this issue, to do it. I know the Senator from Utah wants to say a word about it. So I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. We are in the minority here. You control the flow of legislation. I don't understand why you are asking us for permission to bring up bills. All I know is we are here trying to pass a trade bill, and you are talking about another subject. The point I was making is that thanks to the wisdom of our Members, we now have some--how many hours do we have postcloture?

Mr. GRAMM. Let me say that----

Mr. GRAMM. I object.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. GRAMM. I object.

Mr. GRAMM. I object.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I yield myself 10 minutes.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I will take just 1 minute of time. Let me first say there is much about the argument by the Senator from Massachusetts that, first, I do not understand and, second, I do not agree with. First, let me say I was puzzled by his reference to lawsuits and Republican opposition thereto. If there is any principle I believe in, it is the right of people to protect their property. Second, it seems to me that the Senator has written an amendment that addresses no legitimate concern because in the 57 years we have had investment treaties giving investors in America the right to go to arbitration to have their investment protected, no one has ever won a suit against the United States of America. And meanwhile, American investors use these rights every day in every developing country in the world. They make the difference between confiscation and destruction of American investments, and the protection of American investments and the jobs that flow from them. The Senator argues that nothing in his amendment lessens the rights of American investors. Nothing could be further from the truth. His amendment would require investors to get government permission to protect their basic property rights. Governments would have to sign off in order for investors to obtain protection of their property. Nothing could be more alien to the American system than that notion. His amendment also deems exempt those State and local laws and ordinances related to a series of issues--such as health, safety, environment, or public morals, whatever that is--unless the laws and ordinances were intended solely to take investor property. That new standard would run counter to our notion of discrimination--which looks at impact not intent--and would be much harder to breach. Finally, the Kerry amendment says that your property is protected only if the taking is complete. That is little consolation to an American investor. I urge the rejection of the Kerry amendment.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we just heard a wonderful dissertation on the trade equivalent of single-entry bookkeeping. Our dear colleague has talked on and on about investment protections in the United States, but he has not said one word about investment protections in other countries for American investors. I want to take a moment to remind my colleagues of a little history that I think is critically important in understanding this issue. At the end of World War II, we negotiated a series of treaties known as Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation Treaties. Later, in the 1980s, we began entering into what are known as bilateral investment treaties, and today we have 45 such treaties. In both the FCN treaties and the bilateral investment treaties, we established procedures to protect our investors overseas. These protections, which were modeled on familiar concepts of American law, became the standard for protection of private property and investment around the world. And they made sure that our investors were protected from unfair treatment by foreign nations. Why does the business community in America adamantly opposed the Kerry amendment? It is not because of concerns about foreign investor protections here in America. It is because they are concerned about protections for Americans overseas. Investment is a reciprocal process. We negotiated 45 bilateral investment treaties in order to protect American investment from being confiscated by actions of other countries. As for foreign investment in America, our colleague argues that billions of dollars will be lost to foreign investors. But he fails to point out that never, ever, have we lost a case since these 45 treaties have been in effect. Not once since chapter 11 of NAFTA has been in effect have we ever lost a case. Not once has there ever been a judgment against the United States of America for failing to protect private property or investments. The problem with this amendment is very simple and straightforward. The problem is that we are not talking only about foreign investors in America. We are talking about American investors around the world as well. These investment agreements are reciprocal. In countries all over the world, if an investor is a large American company, for the most part that company is protected. The governments of those countries are not likely to mess with the company's investments. Nor are they likely to let their local units of government mess with those investments. But a real problem arises when smaller American businesses want to invest abroad. They may not be granted the protections they need. If we take away the investor protections we have worked for years to establish, if we carve out certain areas where investor protections will not apply, if we narrow the scope of investor protections, we will be leaving American investors vulnerable to actions by foreign governments. And in turn we will be discouraging our businesses from investing around the world. Keep in mind that United States investment abroad helps create a market for American goods, promote capitalism, promote democracy, and do everything else that we in the United States want to see done around the world. It is critically important that that investment be protected. Every day these investment treaties protect American investment around the world. Meanwhile, we have never lost a case under these same investment treaties. Let me explain further to my colleagues what happens if we do not provide investment protections. American businesses in certain countries often end up being forced to deal with government corruption. Congress passed the Foreign Corruption Practices Act to try to stop such corruption. But under this amendment to lower investor protections, hundreds of billions of dollars of American investment abroad would be jeopardized. We are the largest investor in the world, and these protections are critically important to us. Let me just recap, then. Today, we have 45 bilateral investment treaties in effect, and each one of them contains a procedure whereby if American investors have their property taken, if they are discriminated against, if they cannot send their earnings back to their home country, they have in place procedures under which they can get access to justice. In 57 years since we have had investment treaties, never, ever has the United States of America lost a case. But every day these same treaties protect American investments in Central and South America, in Africa, in Asia, in the developing world, in the very countries we say we want to see develop capitalist and democratic systems. If we adopt the Kerry amendment, not only would we be responding to a circumstance that has never existed, since America has never lost a case, but we would be undercutting protections for the hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of American investments abroad. And, because of the massive economic damage that would result, we would lose the support of the business community for the trade promotion authority bill. What would we gain if we adopted the Kerry amendment? We simply would gain some ``degree of protection'' in cases that seem silly on their face. It is hard for me to imagine that any of the cases mentioned could possibly result in an affirmative judgment, but that is speculation since no judgment has been made. In 57 years we have never had a judgment against the United States of America. Remember, investment agreements are reciprocal. If the Kerry amendment applied only to investment in America, this would be a largely symbolic but not a very harmful amendment because American protections are solid. But investment protections are reciprocal. Therefore, whatever protections we pledge to apply to foreign investors in America are going to apply to our investors in Mexico, our investors in Africa, our investors in South America, and our investors in developing countries in Asia. Since the Kerry amendment would affect not only foreign investors here but our investors there, we would be stripping away the protections that American investment now have. We would be hurting American companies, and their hundreds of billions of dollars of potential investment, and we would lose the jobs, economic growth, and economic opportunity that has resulted from our status as the world's largest investing nation and the world's largest exporting nation. The Kerry amendment should not be adopted. There is no basis for adopting it. It does our interests virtually no good in America, but it does massive harm to our interests everywhere else in the world. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. GRAMM. I have 2 minutes, and I would like to respond very briefly. First, under the Kerry amendment, if you were an American investor, you could not even file a claim against a developing country that has taken your property unless the U.S. Government agrees to it. And what if the U.S. Government were in some sensitive negotiation with that country? They would want you to simply go away. Whoever heard of having investor protections that are determined on a case by case basis by a government rather than pursuant to an agreement? Second, it is one thing for an amendment to say that we should borrow part of the evolving takings standard--and we all know that the takings doctrine is evolving--from the Supreme Court. But it is another thing to convert that evolving standard into a new international principle, with the result that if a developing country takes only 99.9 percent of an investor's property, the investor has no claim or protections. Clearly, governments that are interested in shaking down American investors are not interested in taking the investor away; they are interested in being paid off for the right to do business in their country. A key purpose of the investment treaties we negotiated over the past 57 years was to prevent our investors from being forced to pay off corrupt governments abroad. That is what we have been trying to stop. Through the Cold War, where we did not have these agreements in place, American businesses had no choice but to pay off corrupt local governments, which the Communists then pointed to as capitalism. That caused us problems all over the world. We negotiated these agreements to put an end to those problems and instill the rule of law worldwide. When we start imposing these limits requiring compensation only for total confiscation, requiring governmental approval in order to claim your protections, and then carving out specific areas where your protections and the rule of law do not apply, it does not take a corrupt government long to figure out that they can impose ``regulations'' or ``special fees'' or ``targeted taxes'' in the unprotected areas. The net result is to extract money from American businesses. Not only is that profoundly wrong, not only is it corrupt, it discourages investment, it hurts American companies, and it hurts American jobs. It is one thing to say we do not need these protections for people who invest in America. But it is another to say that we do not need them for Americans who invest overseas. The plain truth is America has never had a judgment against it under our investment treaties in some 57 years. There has never been a judgment against the United States of America for violating investor protections. We can't adopt the Kerry amendment so that it would apply only to investment in the United States and would not affect protections for our investments around the world. If we could, it would be a useless amendment. And we should not adopt the Kerry amendment and carve out areas where American investors are not protected. If we did, we would be asking for big-time problems with corruption. This is why every business group in America is adamantly opposed to this amendment, and why I urge my colleagues to reject it.

Mr. GRAMM. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I welcome the opportunity to discuss the Dodd-Lieberman amendment. The amendment is very similar to the Lieberman amendment yesterday in terms of its impact, though the approach is very different, so I will not belabor it. But I do want to make several points that I think are relevant to the amendment. The first point is in response to Senator Dodd's argument that the language he wants to impose on all future trade negotiations is identical to the language included in the Jordan free trade agreement approved unanimously by the Senate. That argument assumes that one size fits all. It is similar to the argument I might make if I were going to try to buy a tire manufacturing company after buying a set of its tires. I might argue: You were willing to sell me a set of tires on credit without collateral. Now that I want to buy your whole company, how come you want collateral? What worked for Jordan does not necessarily work elsewhere. I want to remind my colleagues that we rushed to approve the free trade agreement with Jordan because it was an important foreign policy action regarding a friend in one of the most unstable and difficult parts of the world in a time of emergency. It was in effect a foreign policy decision, not a trade policy decision. Indeed, our imports from Jordan are twenty- five one-thousandths of 1 percent of all imports coming into the United States. Trade, while not unimportant, clearly did not drive this agreement. Yet Senator Dodd's point is that if this language was good enough for Jordan, why is it not good enough as a general principle for all trading partners? That question kind of answers itself. If a signature on a note to buy a set of tires at a car dealership is good enough, why isn't the signature good enough to buy a car, or the car company? Because the situations are different. The point is that a trade agreement with, say, Europe would be very different than a trade agreement with Jordan. In terms of trade, a trade agreement with Europe would be shooting with real bullets in terms of trade, jobs, and economic growth, because we already have a well-established economic flow between the United States and Europe. Such a trade agreement would not simply be about foreign policy. In contrast, we are just starting to increase our economic flow between the United States and Jordan, and the agreement quite clearly had a critical foreign policy component. Of course trade with Jordan is not solely about foreign policy. But to say that the principles we set forth in the Jordan agreement ought to be the principles that dictate every agreement we enter into in the future simply is not a valid analogy. My second point is that the document before us is the result of long hours of labor by the Finance Committee. Now, I am not saying that the Finance Committee has cornered the market on wisdom or is infallible, but I will say that the Committee held numerous hearings and had days of debate. Eventually, we worked out a bipartisan compromise on these issues, and the bill was reported 18 to 3. The trade promotion bill approved by Finance is the bill that is supported by the administration and is broadly supported by every major element of the American economy. In that bill, we achieved a balance that preserves the flexibility of the administration to negotiate different trade agreements depending on the particular circumstances. To suggest that somehow we do not deal with child labor is simply not valid. Labor issues are a factor through this bill. For the first time, we have an extensive negotiating objective in a fast-track bill dealing with labor and environmental issues. In addition, we have included language that refers to ILO conventions both those we have ratified and those we have not--on forced labor, minimum employment age, and similar matters. However, the bill as reported provides flexibility, rather than assuming that one size fits all. I do not think there is one size that fits all in almost anything that government does, which is why so many of our programs fail. But even if there were one size that fits all, to suggest that the Jordan Free Trade Agreement, an agreement with a country that produces twenty- five one-thousandths of 1 percent of the products that we import, should serve as the mandate for all future agreements simply does not stand up to scrutiny. In the Finance Committee bill, we have dealt with labor. We have dealt with the environment. And in both areas we have set standards higher than we have ever set before. To suggest that we ought to go back to one particular trade agreement approved in the midst of a crisis in the Middle East with a country that sells twenty-five one- thousandths of 1 percent of all items we buy from the rest of the world, and make it the ironclad standard for every trade negotiation we enter into again from now on, seems to me to be putting us in the kind of straitjacket that we would not want to put any administration in. That is why the Dodd-Lieberman amendment is opposed by a broad cross-section of American business. It is opposed by the administration. It is opposed by the chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee. It is one thing to try to add to the bill a totally new matter that we have not dealt with before. But it is another thing altogether to come in now, on the floor of the Senate, and try to rewrite heart of the bill based on one agreement entered into largely for foreign policy reasons with a key country who happens to sell us just twenty-five one- thousandths of 1 percent of all imports that we buy. Given the current trade flows between the United States and Jordan, any error in the agreement probably would not cause profound economic damage to either country. Our trade flows are just not large enough. Our overall relationship was and is important enough to approve that agreement. It was a good thing to do, and I supported it. But that agreement cannot become the ironclad standard for every trade agreement from this point on. A few points to sum up. This amendment is unnecessary and undoes the bipartisan compromise on labor issues. It is not as if we do not deal with labor issues in the bill before us. In fact, we dealt with them in great detail. They were negotiated extensively, and as a result we now have strong bipartisan support for the bill. To come in now and rewrite the labor section based on one trade agreement we approved during a foreign policy crisis with a country whose sales to the United States are minimal relative to total world sales is just not sound public policy. Secondly, the amendment proposes a one-size-fits-all approach that takes the smallest size as the base. The fact is that right now, there are few countries in the world from whom we buy as few goods as we do from Jordan. More imports are bought by some cities in Texas in a month than are bought by the whole Nation from Jordan in a year. We all hope that the agreement will promote greater trade with Jordan. But the fact is that its sales to us will remain relatively small compared to the sales by the rest of the world. To use the Jordan Agreement as the standard and override the bipartisan compromise in a bill written to be as coherent and flexible as possible does not make any sense. We are not in the welfare business when it comes to trade. It is one thing for a trade agreement to help a government in Jordan. But when we are negotiating trade agreements with the Europeans, or the Japanese, I want the agreements to help us. I want them to benefit from a trade agreement too, but my first concern is to make sure that we benefit. In this case, the negotiation with Jordan was for Jordan. But any negotiation with Europe or Japan should be for America. To apply a foreign policy-driven standard to such negotiations just would not be sound policy. It boils down to one point: different negotiations require different approaches. Any negotiations with China, for example, would be very different from our negotiation with Jordan, just as buying a set of tires on credit is a little bit different than buying the tire company. When you're buying the tire company, you should expect standards that are vastly different in terms of obtaining credit. I hope we will defeat the Dodd-Lieberman amendment. It basically tries to change the very heart of the bipartisan trade promotion authority bill through an amendment offered on the floor. This is the second time we are seeing such an effort. Yesterday, we had an effort by Senator Lieberman to undo the bill. Today, we have a second effort by Senator Dodd and Senator Lieberman to undo the bill. I hope the same people who voted against the effort to undo it yesterday will vote against undoing it today. I am proud of the Jordanian agreement, and I gave it my support. But it should not be the be-all, end-all standard for all future trade agreements. I do not think anybody thinks that it should. It may very well be that some colleagues with a certain bent on some issues like the language of the amendment better than the language of the bill. But the language of the bill is something that has been very carefully negotiated. So I would urge those who want a trade bill to vote against this amendment. Let me conclude by stressing one point of concern. One of the things that has disturbed me for most of this year, and that has become very clear on this trade bill, is that increasingly people are not taking a proprietary position on issues that are of vital national importance. Certainly I am not trying to judge anybody else's motives, but it seems to me that we are seeing votes cast on this trade bill where, from the outside, it looks as if nobody is taking ownership of this critically important bill. In the 24 years I have served in the Congress, I do not think I have ever witnessed a Finance Committee that could not defend its own legislation on the floor. We are seeing efforts to make wholesale changes that would undo the entire agreement. We have what is close to piracy where people are trying to load one more item on this wagon, and the wagon is now rickety and on the verge of running into the ditch. Anybody paying attention to this debate knows that trade promotion authority at this point is almost dead. Now we have an effort to rewrite the heart of the bill's bipartisan language on labor, and impose a standard that we negotiated with a country whose trade with the United States is a fraction of the trade we have with the world. Under such circumstances, I will not be willing to pay the already great tributes of health insurance for unemployed that is paid by workers who do not have health insurance, and wage guarantees that are higher for the beneficiaries than the average wage of working people in the country. If we truly want this bill to become law, then we are going to have to begin to take some ownership of the bill. We can start by defeating this amendment. Well intended though it may be, it is harmful because it makes the assumption that one size fits all, using a standard applied in an agreement driven by foreign policy to a nation whose sales by any measure are minor in the context of overall United States trade. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, as many of my colleagues know, I was asked by the White House and by the Republican leadership to try to negotiate a package that would allow us to pass trade promotion authority. In the process, I found myself in a position of having to either kiss an ugly pig on the mouth or send it off to the barbeque. Through our negotiations, we were able to drop the steel legacy provision. We also were able to dramatically reduce the proposed wage insurance program, cutting its funding level from $100 million to $50 million and its authorization from 5 years to 2 years. But I am not going to stand here today and argue on behalf of the principle of wage insurance. I can tell my colleagues that as a conferee, I am going to oppose this provision, and I hope it will be removed. I believe that our leader and Senator Grassley and I are in the position where we have made an agreement, and therefore we must stick to it. I could stand here and say I am very unhappy that those who have entered into the agreement on the other side of the aisle nonetheless have found it convenient to continue to load more and more and more onto this wagon, to the point where the axle is about to break. But in my book, when you give your word, when you try to work out an agreement, when you try to make compromise work, you give up the luxury of coming back later and picking and choosing which provisions to support. In fact, it is sort of like fast track: you make a deal and you must stick by the whole package. This afternoon we are going to have several votes. First, we are going to have a vote on Senator Dodd's amendment, which effectively is the same amendment as the one offered yesterday by Senator Lieberman. If that amendment passes, I am off this wagon. We also are going to have a vote on adding back the steel legacy provision. If steel legacy costs are included in this bill, I am going to do everything in my power to kill this bill, even though I am for fast-track authority and believe it is critical. You simply reach a point where greed and irresponsibility so overwhelm the underlying cause that you just cannot tolerate it. There's a bigger point to all this, and that is the question of taking ownership. Quite frankly, I don't believe the chairman of the Finance Committee and the majority leader of the Senate have taken ownership of this trade promotion authority bill. I think we have had a game of piracy to try to see what can be gotten in return for this bill since they know that the President wants this bill and that it is in the national interest. They claim to be for the bill, but at every step along the way, we are having piracy committed against this bill. I gave my word when I signed on to the agreement. Had I been the principal instead of the negotiator, I am not sure I would have agreed to our agreement. In fact, I probably wouldn't have. But I did. However, if these other amendments pass, if the deal is not kept, if it is clear that this piracy is going to continue, then at that point I would feel free to vote my conscience. The point is that we have made an agreement. As appealing as it is to me to go back and undo the wage insurance part of it--a rotten, stinking part of it--I don't think that that would be responsible. But I will fight to get rid of this provision in conference and I hope that it will be dropped. I have taken some degree of ownership of this bill, and feel a responsibility for it. For this process to succeed, I believe that those of us who want fast-track authority--the majority leader, the minority leader, the chairman of Finance, the ranking member of Finance, and those Senators who want this bill--have to begin to show some ownership of and responsibility for the bill as negotiated. If we do not, and instead keep seeing efforts to pile on, we are going to kill this bill. For example, if steel legacy is added to this bill, it is dead. If the Dodd amendment, which is effectively the same vote we had on Lieberman, is added to this bill, we won't have trade promotion authority and I therefore will be off the wagon and out of the deal. Today, I am in the deal. As I said, I have taken on partial ownership of the bill. When you sign on to a compromise, when you take partial ownership, when you take responsibility, it means you have to stand up for the deal and vote against even those amendments that you otherwise would support.

Mr. GRAMM. On this matter or any motion related to it?

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I rise in opposition to the Lieberman motion to strike. I welcome the opportunity to debate it because this motion goes right to the heart of the constitutional system that we cherish in America, and from which we benefit every single day. Let me explain this amendment and what it would do, where it came from, and why it is relevant. For the first time under fast-track authority, we in this bill will be bringing labor and environmental issues into the trade negotiation process. In 2000, the Clinton Administration negotiated a free trade agreement with Jordan that for the first time brought both labor and the environment fully into the process. Now, based on the Jordan Agreement, the bill before the Senate would direct our negotiators in all future trade agreements to establish international dispute resolution tribunals to proctor and enforce trade agreements in which labor and environmental issues are involved. And this will probably become the standard for our trade agreements with the rest of the world. The bill approved by the House of Representatives and then the Senate Finance Committee sets out our negotiating objectives of the United States with respect to labor and the environment. These objectives are pretty clear, and I want to take the time to read them because I want to be absolutely sure everybody understands this issue. Section 2102(b)(11) says that the principal trade negotiating objectives of the United States with respect to labor and the environment are: To ensure that a party to a trade agreement with the United States does not fail to effectively enforce its environmental or labor laws through a sustained or recurring course of action or inaction, in a manner affecting trade between the United States and that party after entry into force of a trade agreement between those countries. This objective is what we would be trying to achieve, and it would be binding on both the United States and on the trading partner with whom we are negotiating. I want to remind my colleagues that the first sentence of the Constitution of the United States--article I, section 1--sets forth the legislative power, and sets it squarely in the Congress: All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. It is the first sentence of our Constitution, so we are not fooling around here. In other words, there is no question under the American constitutional system that Congress has the power to make the law. But now we are entering into trade agreements that for the first time will involve passing judgment on our labor and environmental laws and standards. In light of the constitutional guarantees of article I, section 1, the House and Senate authors of the trade promotion authority bill before us decided to set out what our rights are as Americans with regard to our labor and environmental standards. It therefore goes on to say that our objectives also are: (B) to recognize that parties to the trade agreement retain the right to exercise discretion with respect to investigatory, prosecutorial, regulatory, and compliance matters and to make decisions regarding the allocation of resources to enforcement with respect to other labor or environmental matters determined to have higher priorities, and to recognize that a country is effectively enforcing its laws if a course of action or inaction reflects a reasonable exercise of such discretion, or results from a bona fide decision regarding the allocation of resources. It then goes on to say, and this is the sentence that Senator Lieberman would strike: And no retaliation may be authorized based on the exercise of these rights or the right to establish domestic labor standards and levels of environmental protection. What does this mean? It means that we are going to enter into trade agreements, and that in those trade agreements we are going to try to promote labor and environmental protection, but that we will maintain our sovereignty with regard to writing our own labor and environmental laws, and to exercising Executive Branch power to enforce the law through the promulgation and enforcement of regulations. It means that in exercising our rights under the Constitution of the United States, we could not be subject to retaliation by our trading partners. Let me point out to my colleagues that the concern about retaliation is not an idle concern. It is the kind of problem that we increasingly will run into as we move further into a world where trade crosses borders and where international agreements increasingly bind the United States. The question as we move into this world comes down to this: What rights will we preserve as a sovereign country? If we struck the protective language approved by the House and by Senate Finance, we would be passing the decisionmaking authority on domestic labor and environmental issues from the Congress and the President to international tribunals. Those tribunals--not Congress and the President--would be the ones to pass judgment as to whether changes in U.S. labor and environmental laws represented a failure to effectively enforce our laws. The tribunals, on which Americans are a minority, would be the ones making those decisions. And if they found that U.S. actions were wanting, they could authorize retaliation against American exporters--all on the basis of the exercise of our legitimate constitutional rights. Let me give you some real examples that exemplify this concern. In the North American Free Trade Agreement, we did not include Jordan-like labor and environmental provisions, but we did have side agreements on labor and environment. Those side agreements, which were negotiated after President Clinton came into office, include an enforcement mechanism that allows parties to file claims alleging failure by a NAFTA country to effectively enforce its labor and environmental laws. The NAFTA experience provides several examples that go to the very heart of this sovereignty issue. For example, a complaint was filed alleging that the United States was not effectively enforcing the Endangered Species Act--namely, in protecting the spotted owl--and therefore was benefitting the United States in trade. If the protective clause of the pending bill were stricken by the Lieberman motion, and the bill became law, who would make the determination as to whether we are protecting the spotted owl if a similar complaint were filed under that new law? These decisions would be made not by the American Congress, not by the American President, not by the American courts, but by an international dispute resolution tribunal, the majority of whose members would not be American. That tribunal would decide whether or not we are protecting the spotted owl and, therefore, whether or not we are enforcing the Endangered Species Act. And if they concluded that we were not, they would have the power to order retaliation against American manufactured products and American agricultural products. Let me give another example. Some years ago we passed a rider to an appropriations bill that eliminated private remedies for salvage timber sales. Following the constitutional process, that rider was approved by the Senate, approved by the House, and signed into law by the President. Subsequently, a complaint against the United States was filed under NAFTA that alleged that by passing that rider, we had failed to effectively enforce our environmental laws. If this bill were approved without the protective clause, due to the Lieberman motion to strike, then an international tribunal--only one of whom would be an American--would make a determination as to whether or not, in exercising our right to enact laws regarding federal timber policy, we should be subject to retaliation against our manufactured products, our agricultural products, or our services, or anything else we sell on the world market. Let me give one more example. I could cite examples that involve apple growers, and egg workers, but let me talk about one that involves Connecticut. A complaint was filed under NAFTA against the United States by the Yale Law School Worker's Rights Project alleging failure to effectively enforce U.S. minimum wage and overtime protections. If this bill were approved as modified by the Lieberman amendment, we would face a situation where the decision as to whether or not the United States was enforcing fair labor standards would have been determined not by a Federal court sitting in Connecticut but by an international tribunal. In the case of NAFTA, that tribunal would include only one American among the three judges. In the case of a trade agreement with Europe, that tribunal making a determination about whether or not we are enforcing our laws would include mostly Europeans. I submit that we do not want to put ourselves in that position. The issue here is pure and simple: it is sovereignty. If we strike this protective provision, we will be putting ourselves in a position where we can change our laws but we will be subject to a judgment by non-Americans that in making that change we gained an unfair trade advantage and can be penalized for it. Determinations about whether or not we are enforcing labor and environmental laws would be transferred from Congress and the President to international tribunals. I believe it is critical that we preserve American sovereignty. I cannot believe that the American people, if they were alerted to this issue, would support putting decisions on labor and environmental issues in the hands of international tribunals rather than in the hands of American courts, the Congress, and the President. Let me give a final example. I know many people in the Senate did not vote to open ANWR, but had Congress made a decision to open ANWR based on national security concerns, under the provisions of this bill as proposed to be amended by Senator Lieberman, we could see retaliation imposed on cotton growers, computer manufacturers, or any other exporter in the United States. Based on a complaint filed before an international tribunal, the majority of whose members are not Americans, we could see a decision that we benefited in trade by opening ANWR, and therefore, that we could be subject to sanction. A tribunal could not overturn our action in making the law, but it could authorize retaliation in the form of punitive tariffs against American manufacturers, agricultural producers, and service providers. That is something I do not believe we want to do. I want submit for the Record a letter from the American Farm Bureau Federation that is dated today: The American Farm Bureau Federation urges your opposition to the Lieberman motion to strike language in the Trade Promotion Authority bill that would safeguard U.S. sovereignty and protect U.S. agricultural producers from retaliatory tariffs. I ask unanimous consent that the letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM. I raise a point of order that the amendment violates section 311(a)(2)(B) of the Congressional Budget Act.

Mr. GRAMM. I will reserve until the appropriate time.

Mr. GRAMM. I will not speak at length on the Edwards amendment, but I would like my colleagues to note that under this amendment, we once again would be expanding trade adjustment assistance benefits. The Congressional Budget Office, for some inexplicable reason, is saying that the Baucus-Grassley amendment--already itself subject to a point of order--has some savings in the outyears, even though those savings are grossly smaller than the new expenditures. Therefore, they are saying that because the program put in place by this amendment would take 18 to 24 months, it would not be subject to a point of order. It sounds to me as if people are decided on this amendment. But under this amendment we once again would be adding additional benefits for up to 26 weeks for people who are not now receiving trade adjustment assistance. It seems to me at the very moment we are spending Social Security trust funds, we should care about preserving funds. But nobody seems to care. Yet if we were debating giving someone a new tax cut, there would be a great hue and cry that we were taking money away from the Social Security trust fund. Yet here, when we would be adding more benefits and creating more programs, nobody seems to care. I am opposed to this amendment. I hope some will join me in voting against it. I don't know how we are ever going to pay for all these new spending programs at the very moment when we are running a deficit and spending Social Security surplus. Everyone seems joyful to create a new program to benefit someone. But at some point, we have to draw the line. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I thank our dear colleague from Connecticut. I would like to enter a letter, and at that point I would like a minute toward the end to sort of sum up. I have a letter here from the three principal Democrat cosponsors of the trade promotion authority bill in the House, Cal Dooley, Bill Jefferson, and John Tanner. This letter is important because it discusses the very provision of the bill related to no retaliation based on sovereign rights, an issue which is being discussed here with an effort to strike this language. Since they discuss it directly, I would like to commend it to my colleagues. I ask unanimous consent to print the letter in the Record.