Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I will be very quick. The Senator from Connecticut asks us: What is wrong in being held to our promises? What is wrong in fulfilling our commitments? There is nothing wrong with it. But the real question is who should make the judgment as to whether we have fulfilled our commitments and holding to our promises. Should those judgments be made by the Congress, the President, and our Federal courts, or should it be made by international tribunals? If we could divide the question so that we could impose these judgments on our trading partners, and in the process deny their sovereignty, I think that might find some favor around her. But the problem is that the objectives in this bill apply to us as well. Therefore, this is not an environmental question. It is not a labor question. It is a sovereignty question. 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.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. GRAMM. Let me make up an example. Let's say we are negotiating with the Chinese on a trade agreement, and one of the provisions we want is for them to recognize and respect our patents and copyrights on everything from books to CDs to DVDs. If you go to China, you will see that while you cannot bring them back with you because our Customs will not let you, and for good reason, everywhere in China you can buy pirated CDs, DVDs, books, and the like. Let's say we could work out an agreement with them that required enforcement against patent infringement in return for our reducing a patent term on an AIDS medicine or on some broad spectrum antibiotic that is important to their population's general health. Even if we had to compensate the United States patent holder because of the takings provision, there might very well be a good deal in the making there. Yet, we could not make that deal if a separate vote were allowed. My example may be somewhat unrealistic, and I am sure if Ambassador Zoellick were here he would have 100 good examples, but I think it makes the point. Let me go to the next provision of law that would be covered by the Dayton-Craig amendment. The third area has to do with section 201. The proponents of this amendment say over and over that we cannot negotiate away our protections against unfair trade. Yet Section 201 has nothing to do with unfair trade. It makes no pretense at unfair trade. Section 201 simply is a remedy whereby American producers can get relief if foreign competition is successful and if the injured American producers can show they are losing jobs because of imports. It has nothing to do with unfair trade. In a sense, it has to do with successful trade. Granted, we are concerned about Americans losing their jobs, and we have assistance programs to give them some cushion. But is there anybody here who cannot imagine that we might be willing to eliminate those protective barriers in return for the elimination of similar barriers in Europe, Japan, Korea, or China? Or that we might find a better way to compensate and protect injured companies, perhaps through trade adjustment assistance? This whole debate, the whole title of the amendment, the whole preamble to the amendment, is about unfair trade. Yet probably the most important laws covered by this amendment has nothing to do with unfair trade. Am I in favor of unilaterally waiving every 201 right in America? The answer is ``No.'' But my point is that if we could eliminate similar barriers against American exports, can no one imagine the possibility there might be an agreement that would be advantageous to everybody? Yet no such agreement could ever be consummated under the Dayton-Craig amendment because nobody would negotiate the elimination of their protective safeguard against American exports unless we eliminate or modify our Section 201 provision. Negotiation in this area would be a nonstarter. As I said when I started my remarks, our need for fast track arose in the Kennedy Round, when President Kennedy recognized that the greatest impediment to trade was no longer tariffs but domestic laws that limited trade. It was when he tried to change those laws that Congress came in and changed the deal. The Kennedy Round went into effect without our being a party to it, all because of the issues that are raised by the amendment before the Senate. The Round died for exactly the issue that are listed here in the Dayton-Craig amendment. The recognition that you cannot change a negotiated deal after the fact is what led to enactment of fast track. Senator Baucus and I were involved in negotiations the other day. There are a lot of things in that final deal I really do not like. But I do not have the right to go back after the fact and say Senator Baucus gave up on items A, B, C, D, and E, which is great, but I want to renegotiate and change our deal. I do not have a right to do that. A deal is a deal. That is the very issue the Senate is dealing with here. The next provisions of law covered by the Dayton-Craig amendment are chapters 2, 3, and 5 of title II of the Trade Act of 1974. This is the fourth so-called unfair trade protection provision. Yet as one reads those chapters, they have nothing to do with unfair trade. They simply have to do with the assistance provided to companies and workers negatively affected by imports or by a company's shift in production. Some may not favor shifts in production, but when did it turn into an unfair trade practice? Every day, Americans are moving investments from one country to another. We are the world's largest investor. In fact one of the things we are trying to do in the underlying bill is to get other countries to allow investment in America and allow greater freedom for American investments in their country. Even if a shift in production were an unfair trade practice, how could we say to countries that we want to negotiate away prohibitions you have against producing in the United States, but we aren't willing to do the same? Remember when we had the big battle with Japan over autos? We wanted them to produce some of their automobiles in America, and we negotiated over it, and in fact they did increase production here. But why would they ever negotiate if we have said in advance that we are not willing to eliminate prohibitions against plant relocation in our own country? Why should the Japanese allow companies to move out of Japan or set up programs that impede the process if we are not willing to do it? I could go on at length about the other laws covered by this amendment. The amendment is written very broadly. It may list 5 bills in particular, but it is written so broadly that in my opinion it covers at least 18 other laws that are part of current trade law: for example, section 1317 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitive Act of 1988; the Antidumping Act of 1916; the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000; section 516A of the Tariff Act of 1930; section 129 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act; and the list goes on. The plain truth is, given the way it is written, not even the authors of this amendment truly know what it does. I will conclude by making some final points. I understand the need for consensus. We do not get to write these bills by ourselves. It requires give and take. My belief, and the belief of the vast majority of members of the Republican Conference in the Senate, is that we have given. We gave on health benefits that are not paid for, that we think represent bad public policy, that take away from poor working people to give to relatively high income, nonworking people. We gave on 2 years of wage guarantee benefits for people affected by trade. Meanwhile, somebody who lost their job because of a terrorist attack gets 6 months of unemployment, no health benefits, and no wage insurance benefits. We are getting to the point where we have already paid for the trade bill, and if this amendment passes on top of those payments, we will not be getting a bill at all. The principal ingredient of trade promotion authority--in fact the heart of it, in its purest form--is very simply the right of the President, within the parameters we set out in law, to go out and negotiate a trade agreement and bring it back and subject it to a yes- or-no vote in Congress. We do not have the right to amend a trade agreement; we simply have to take the whole thing or reject the whole thing. That is what trade promotion authority, or fast track, is. Yet the pending amendment says the President does not get an up-or-down vote because in some 23 different areas of law, many of which have absolutely nothing to do with unfair trade, we can have a separate vote and if a majority votes to make a change, then the trade agreement is modified. Under those circumstances, nobody will negotiate with us and the President effectively does not have fast-track authority. So what we have is a bill that claims to be about fast-track authority, which is a single take-it-or-leave-it vote on a deal. And yet we have an amendment before us that eliminates that provision and requires a separate vote on things in the agreement that we do not like. I do not see how the two can be reconciled. It seems to me that when you are voting for this amendment, you are voting against trade promotion authority. I do not think you can have it both ways. You cannot say on the one hand that we will give the President the right to get his agreements voted on up or down, take it or leave it, yes or no; and then on the other hand say we can adopt an amendment that says but of course on some 23 different provisions of law we don't have to take it or leave it, we can change it. Today, through a letter from the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Trade Representative, the President rightfully has indicated that he will veto the bill if the Dayton-Craig amendment is included in it. To conclude, we paid a very heavy price to get fast track, and this amendment takes fast track away. Rather than pay all these new tributes--the expanded trade adjustment assistance, these new health benefits that are not paid for, the new entitlements that are not paid for, this wage insurance that smells very much like the programs that are killing some European countries that have not created a net new job in countries in 20 years--we are quickly reaching the point where even the strongest proponents of free trade have to say this amendment breaks the axle of the wagon. Even the strongest proponents are saying that with all else we paid to get a vote on the trade promotion authority bill, if this amendment is in the bill it means we don't have trade promotion authority, so why pay for all the other things? I urge my colleagues as we try to find a solution to this problem. That solution might be a compromise in which we set up an oversight committee to allow those concerned about these laws to monitor negotiations, and provide 90 days' notice of any potential trade agreement that changed any of these laws. There are many ways we can enhance the ability of Members to be involved and get advance notice to allow them build political opposition. I hope those who want to pass this bill will find a way to get around this dilemma. We are already at the point that given what we are already paying for this bill, it almost is not worth it. I believe that at this point, many Republican Members of the Senate are holding their nose and saying: OK, we have to do a bunch of bad things, but we will get trade promotion authority and maybe some of the bad things will be addressed in conference. But over and over bills have gotten worse, not better, in conference. If you are for trade promotion authority, if you want the deal we put together to work, I believe we need help in finding a way to respond to the concerns raised without providing for a separate vote, because a separate vote destroys trade promotion authority. If the two Senators who offered the amendment wanted to be on the oversight committee for the Senate, I would be willing to write the bill to make sure they were put on it. I don't have any objection to oversight and I am for notice. Then, if people were getting ready to vote against a fast-tracked trade agreement, they could tell the President that if he makes these changes, he is jeopardizing my vote. And they would have 90 days to build up an alliance to lobby against it. When ``lobbying'' is mentioned people say oh gosh, that's terrible, terrible. But making your voice heard is a good thing guaranteed under the Constitution. But what we cannot agree to without killing the underlying bill is Congress' ability to change the trade agreement once it has been negotiated. The President must be able to say to our trading partner that a deal is a deal; not that wait, it was a deal, but the part we agreed to that we did not like is not a deal because 51 Members of the Senate decided to amend it. I accept and am for the process whereby 51 Members of the Senate can defeat the implementing bill for a trade agreement. I have never voted against an implementing bill, although I can imagine a trade agreement that I would think was so bad that it was not worth it. I believe I ought to have the right to vote no. And I have that right under fast track or trade promotion authority. But I do not have the right to change the deal. This amendment would allow Congress to change the deal, which is why it is a killer amendment. It is the antithesis to what trade promotion authority is about. You cannot be for trade promotion authority, which is a single vote on the deal, and then be for an amendment that allows votes to amend the deal. I don't see why the people who are for this amendment don't simply vote against the bill, and let those who are for it have a chance to vote for it. The Dayton-Craig amendment would gut that process. It would leave the Senate in the unhappy position of having a fast track bill that includes an amendment that undoes fast track. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I want to talk about trade promotion authority. I want to talk a little bit about the history of how we came to be here. I want to talk about why this issue is so critically important. I want to talk about the Craig amendment. And I want to talk about how we are reaching a point where we are beginning to endanger trade promotion authority altogether. This is a lot to talk about, and I know there are a lot of other people who want to speak, so let me begin. And let me start at a logical point: 1934. Imagine that it is 1934 in America. One out of every three Americans is out of work. The gross domestic product of the country has declined by almost a third. We have adopted a series of protective tariffs including the onerous Smoot-Hawley tariffs initiated by Republicans and supported by Democrats. And in the process, we not only have a depression in our own country, but we, by starting a trade war worldwide, have turned the global recession of 1929 and 1930 into a global depression. And in that humbling moment of 1934, where everything we did related to trade and the economy was wrong, there was a rare bipartisan consensus. It occurred because the country was in so much trouble, and because there was a recognition that we had created our own problem. At that moment in 1934, Republicans and Democrats got together and passed what was called the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. That Act allowed the President to negotiate 29 trade agreements between 1934 and 1945. We literally were the leader in starting up world trade again. As world trade was reignited, as our economy started to grow, and as we fought and won World War II, the bipartisan consensus on trade grew. We saw that trade is a good thing that promotes jobs, growth, opportunity, prosperity, and freedom. The bipartisan consensus expanded to the point where in 1948 we adopted the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, known as GATT, and initiated a worldwide effort to try to open up global trade. Subsequently, from 1947 to 1963, we completed five successful negotiating rounds under GATT. But then, in 1962, something happened that is highly relevant to the debate we are having today over the Dayton amendment. By 1962, the principal impediment to trade in the world was not protective tariffs. Instead, the key impediment was non- tariff measures anti-trade laws adopted by countries that limited the ability of trade to flow freely. For example, countries began to adopt laws allowing producers within a country to get special protection if they were harmed by trade, and allowing countries to subsidize their exports if they felt they were losing out in trade. By 1962, therefore, President Kennedy recognized it was no longer enough to negotiate tariff reductions. We needed to negotiate away all the barriers that we and other countries had put up that consisted not of tariffs, but of non-tariff trade protections. Therefore, the Kennedy Round focused on issues such as countries' use of export subsidies, and of anti-dumping laws. When the Kennedy Round of negotiations was completed, it addressed not only tariffs, but sought to establish some worldwide rules related to countries' use of anti-trade laws. But at that point, when presented with the Kennedy Round by the Johnson Administration, Congress approved legislation undoing the provisions of the Kennedy Round Agreement that related to anti-trade items such as export subsidies--the very provisions we are debating today in the Dayton amendment. Congress effectively amended the deal. The Kennedy Round of negotiations was agreed to by other GATT members and became the new foundation for world trade. But because Congress basically changed the deal, the United States did not participate in or get the full benefits of the Kennedy Round. We had negotiated this entire set of agreements with our trading partners. But when we changed one critical ingredient, our trading partners said: We are not willing to negotiate with the United States and then let Congress strike the parts in which the United States made concessions and yet leave the parts where we, the United States' trading partners, made our concessions. When the Kennedy Round went ahead without the United States in 1967, so shocked was Congress that in 1974 we created a new process that today is known as fast track. And every succeeding President since President Ford has had fast-track trade authority. That trade authority has allowed the President to go out and negotiate agreements with our trading partners. In those agreements we give up some things we don't want to give up, and our partners give up some things they don't want to give up, but the United States and the group of countries involved decide that overall, the trade agreement is in their interest. And that was the procedure that we had in place until 1994, when the fast-track provisions expired. Since then, we have found that few countries in the world are willing to negotiate with us, because any trade agreement negotiated could be amended in Congress. Obviously, countries are not willing to make concessions that bind them when our concessions would not bind us should Congress decide to change them. As a result, there are some 130 trade agreements worldwide that we in the United States are not part of. For example, Europe has negotiated an expanded trade agreement with South American nations. We have no similar agreement. Mexico has negotiated and successfully completed free trade agreements with Central and South American nations. We have no such agreements. Canada has negotiated free trade agreements with South American nations. We have been unable to have such agreements. So today, appliances that could be produced cheaper and better in the United States are being sold in Chile today by Canadian manufacturers because their manufacturers have an advantage over ours: they have a free trade agreement that means lower tariffs. Chilean consumers could buy better American appliances cheaper, but without a trade agreement, they can't buy them without having to pay a tariff. Canada benefits from that trade, and we do not. We have come here today to try to set this situation straight. We have come here today to try to give the President the authority to promote American exports and to engage in trade liberalization around the world. Without getting into a long harangue about it, let me say that Republicans have been asked to pay a tremendous level of tribute to get to this point. The President asked the Senate for an up-or-down vote on trade promotion authority. That request was denied. Instead, the majority has said that to get a vote on trade promotion authority, we must add a trade adjustment assistance bill to it, and that bill must contain a new provision requiring the government to pay 70 percent of the health care costs of people who lose their jobs because of trade, even though many Americans have no health care benefit when they are working. Moreover, we have been asked to agree--and to this point we reluctantly have agreed--that if you are a worker whose company is affected by trade and is not competitive, you get not only 2 years of unemployment and 70 percent of your health care benefit, but you get part of your wages paid for by the government. Let's say you lose your job in the steel mill but you have always wanted to be a batboy for the Pittsburgh Pirates. If you take the lower-paying job as a batboy, we will supplement your wages to make up half the difference of what you lost in salary from the steel mill wages as compared to the Pittsburgh Pirates bat boy wages. Meanwhile, if you lose your job because a terrorist destroys the factory you work in, you get 6 months unemployment and you get no health care. It is fair to say that there are 45 Republican Members of the Senate who are adamantly opposed--adamantly opposed--to those provisions. We have created two new entitlements that are unfunded and that nobody knows what they cost. We are creating the incredible anomaly where we will be taxing people who are working and who don't have health insurance in order to subsidize 70 percent of the health care costs of certain people who are unemployed but had health insurance when they worked. They now will be getting a taxpayer subsidy, even though the people paying the subsidy don't have health care themselves. And we are being asked to sign on to a system where the American Government for the first time is going to get into wage guarantees. There is no sense beating this old dead horse, but let me say that these are the same kinds of deals that Europe is desperately trying to get out of. They can't create jobs because they can't cut old jobs because they have to pay all these benefits. Yet in this tribute we are having to pay to get the trade bill, we are going in the direction that the Europeans are actively trying to get out of. We are going in the direction of imposing heavy socialistic programs that are going to have a stifling effect on the budget. And now, in the midst of a bill that already has all these provisions that 45 Republicans hate, that will drive up the deficit, that will make the economy less competitive, and that create a terrible injustice in the system, we now are presented with an amendment before us that will literally undo fast-track authority by allowing Congress to change the deal. Can you imagine if in buying and selling a house, or any other commonplace negotiation, you suddenly are told you must pay more than you negotiated to pay? Can you imagine how commerce would break down when deals can be renegotiated after the negotiations are done? The whole purpose of paying this heavy tribute, and adopting all this terrible, harmful public policy is to get the positive effect of fast track whereby there is an up-or-down vote on accepting the negotiated deal. But now in comes the Dayton-Craig amendment that says to the President, OK, you can negotiate, you can give, you can take, but when the trade bill comes back, if you have negotiated in areas where Congress has written laws to hinder trade, then we get to vote on those provisions separately. And if you cannot get 51 votes, then those provisions are taken out. What country in the world is going to be foolish enough to negotiate with us when they know there is going to be a separate vote on the parts of the agreement that we in the United States like the least? We would never negotiate with another country under circumstances where their legislative body could take out the parts of the negotiation they did not like but leave in the parts we did not like. This amendment kills trade promotion authority because it is counter to the very thesis that underlies it. What is trade promotion authority about if it is not about an up-or-down vote on a trade agreement, without amendment? How can a provision which allows part of an agreement--the part that is likely to be least popular in the United States--to be voted on separately? How can anybody be confused that this amendment absolutely kills trade promotion authority? As the Dayton-Craig amendment has been debated, people have gotten the idea that this amendment has to do only with unfair trade practices. But most of this amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with unfair trade practices. And even where it does, it is obvious on its face that if we could negotiate agreements to fix those practices both here and in our trading partners' countries, we would want to do it. Let me now go through the provisions of law that would be affected by the Dayton-Craig amendment. First, the Dayton-Craig amendment says that Congress would have the right to strike, by majority vote, any provision that would limit actions against foreign subsidies such as income or price supports. The first law the amendment talks about title VII of the Tariff Act of 1930, which includes our countervailing duty law. What is that law about? That law is about American taxpayers subsidizing American producers to compensate for the subsidies that foreign governments are giving to their manufacturers and their agricultural producers. I ask my colleagues, when we cannot sell our agricultural products in Europe because of their subsidies, when we have spent 25 years trying to get them to reduce those subsidies, why in the world would we want to set forth a rule saying that American negotiators can negotiate anything except agricultural subsidies. Why in the world would we ever want to ban negotiations in which the Europeans agree to cut their subsidies and we agree to cut ours? Yet by taking subsidy disciplines off the table, that effectively is what we'd be doing. What this amendment really would like to do is allow negotiations reducing European and American agricultural subsidies to go forward, but once that agreement gets over here, allow Congress to strike the provisions reducing American agricultural subsidies. Why in the world would the Europeans ever enter into such an agreement? They would never enter into such an agreement. When 60 cents out of every dollar of farm income in America now is coming directly from the Government, when we are paying farmers literally millions of dollars to produce products that we end up having to dump on the world market, and when we claim we do this because our foreign competitors are doing the same thing, why in the world should we prevent the President from getting together the major agriculture- producing countries and saying let's stop cheating, let's get rid of these income and price support subsidy programs so we can have freer trade in agriculture? My point is that this amendment would ban for all practical purposes all agreements that have to do with export subsidies. It would ban any agreement that has to do with eliminating the unfair trade practice of subsidies by us or by our competitors. I want my colleagues to understand that when the proponents of this amendment stand up and say they simply do not want agreements that undermine our laws protecting Americans and American producers, what they are really talking about is our ability to negotiate away harmful subsidies. Why in the world should we not be negotiating with the Europeans, the Koreans, or the Japanese to suggest that we all reduce the amount of subsidies that we are paying to dump steel on the world market? Why don't we all agree to reduce the subsidies that are resulting in overproduction of agricultural products? The net result of this provision will not be to protect American manufacturers and farmers from losing their subsidies. The result of this amendment, if adopted, will be that there will never be another trade agreement that has anything to do with reducing export subsidies. And of all the nations on Earth, we would be the biggest beneficiary of such an agreement. What country in the world can outproduce Iowa in agriculture? We could sell billions of dollars of agricultural products in Europe if we could negotiate an end to export subsidies. Why should we prohibit the President from negotiating them? We ought to be encouraging him to negotiate them. But this amendment, despite all the rhetoric about eliminating our ability to protect our producers from unfair trade, protects us right out of being able to eliminate unfair trade. The second provision of the Dayton-Craig amendment refers to our anti-dumping laws. Now, on its surface, the amendment sounds good. The President would not be able to negotiate anything that would prevent America from protecting its producers from dumping. In other words, we will not be dumped upon. But what does dumping mean? First of all, dumping means all these low-price quality items Americans can buy for their families at department stores. But forget for a moment that American families enjoy a better quality of life from low-price imports. Why shouldn't we negotiate an agreement that says why should we subsidize products to dump on your market and why should you subsidize products to dump on our market when we could get together and negotiate an armistice where we both stop dumping? When one listens to the rhetoric of supporters of the Dayton-Craig amendment, gosh, it sounds appealing. They say, do not eliminate our protections against dumping. But when we protect our right to dump and our right to protect ourselves against dumping, we effectively eliminate our ability to negotiate for a world where we stop dumping by everybody. That just does not make sense to me. Third, another law covered by the Dayton-Craig amendment is Section 337, which relates to U.S. patents and copyrights. From listening to the rhetoric, you might think the amendment says that anything the President might do that weakens American patents and copyrights will require a separate vote. But who owns all the patents and copyrights in the world? What nation in the world has tried to write language protecting patents and copyrights into every trade agreement since 1948? The United States of America. We are the only country in the world that wants to talk about copyrights and patents. Why? Because we own copyrights, and we own patents. Why in the world would we want to bar the President from holding negotiations in the very areas where the United States will benefit the most? If we, who hold the vast majority of the copyrights and patents in the world, could negotiate an international agreement on respecting copyrights and patents, would we not be the principal beneficiary of it?

Mr. GRAMM. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM. Let me respond. The Senator asks whether I am aware that the Senate could decide not to strip out this provision. Yes, I am aware of that point. But every country with whom we wanted to negotiate would realize that Congress nonetheless had the ability to strip provisions out. And what country would negotiate changes to its patent and copyright laws knowing that whatever change to we agreed to could be stripped out? Let me use a contracts example. I have only a limited number of contracts examples because I am an old schoolteacher and have been a politician for a long time, and most of the examples I have are consumer examples. But what if we had negotiated a contract that I would buy your house, but we wrote into the contract that I had the ability to change one part of the contract to suit me but that you did not have a right to change a part of the contract to suit you? No party to a contract would agree to that. I am not talking about changing copyrights and patents unilaterally. I am talking about reciprocal commitments. Congress has passed resolutions again and again demanding that trade agreements require our trading partners to change their copyright and patent laws. It has been something we have trumpeted, it is in our interest, and we should be promoting it everywhere. But how are we going to get countries to change their laws when any changes we agree to can be voted on separately? As much as I might want your house, and even if I offer a very good price, if I can come back after the contract is signed and change the price, you are not going to negotiate with me.

Mr. GRAMM. I will be happy to yield, but let me finish this one point. How can we get other countries to submit to negotiate on their patent and copyright laws if we say that we want you to change your laws but we are totally unwilling or unable to negotiate on our laws? I will be happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. President, I rise today and apologize to my colleagues. I reserved a lot of time to come speak but I have gotten involved in the debate about our effort to get trade promotion authority. I think it is time well spent. I think the average farmer, in terms of real prosperity, is going to get more if we are successful in trade promotion authority than they are going to get under this bill. So I do not have any apologies to make about the use of the time. I think for farmers and for America trade promotion authority is a lot more important. I am going to vote against this bill because it is a bad bill. We have created a miracle in America, and I think this bill is going to add to that miracle. The miracle is we have the best farmers, with the best talent, with the most effective research system in history, working the best land, with the best tools, and we have created a situation where rural America is no longer a good place to make a living. How is all that possible? It is possible because we have created a program that encourages overproduction and, in the process, impoverishes the very people who are trying to make a living farming and ranching in America. We have artificially inflated the value of agricultural land. We have spent money at a level unprecedented in history. We continue that in this bill. Surely there has to be concern that the top 10 percent of the recipients under this bill will get 37 times as much money on average as the bottom 80 percent will get. How can it make sense to have a bill where 10 percent of the beneficiaries will get 37 times as much money as the bottom 80 percent will get? The average family in America, two-wage-earner family, earns about $49,000 a year. When President Clinton was in office we tried to reduce the taxes paid by two-wage-earner families by stretching the 15-percent tax bracket. Our Democrat colleagues said they were opposed to it because they said it only helped rich people. I remember pointing out on the floor that these rich people made on average $21,600 each. Each member of this working couple family, the ones who were going to benefit of stretching this 15-percent bracket, made $21,600. Many of my colleagues said those are rich people. I pointed out, when did $21,600 a year qualify you as being rich? But, nevertheless, we were unable to do it because President Clinton vetoed the bill. When the Senate debated this bill, we had an amendment that Senator Grassley offered that put a cap on the amount of payments a person could receive under this bill. His amendment said that no one could get more than $275,000 of taxpayer money under this farm bill. Remember that many of our Democrat colleagues said if you made $21,600 you were too rich for a tax cut. Senator Grassley offered an amendment that said the Government can give you over 10 times that amount--$275,000 per farmer. We adopted that amendment--I am proud to say I voted for it--66 to 31. Then we went to conference. Both Houses set a lower cap as to how much money any individual farmer or rancher can get under the bill. And, all of a sudden, what happens? They go to a cap of $360,000-- higher than either House adopted. Then, we have a three-entity rule. Then, we have a husband-and-wife rule. Then, we have a commodity certificate rule. The bottom line is, you can get millions of dollars under this farm bill. One individual can get millions of dollars. So apparently it is OK to pay one person in agriculture millions of dollars, but we can't give a tax cut to people who make $21,600 a year because they are rich. I don't understand that. I don't know how you can justify it. Needless to say, since I am voting against this bill, I am not going to have to. By raising these loan rates in this bill, we have guaranteed that we are going to glut every market with every commodity. Under this bill, every commodity that gets this loan guarantee is going to be under pressure to overproduce. Anybody who knows anything about the functioning of the farm economy knows that when you set that loan rate above the market price, which this bill does, you are going to have people producing for the loan. The commodities are then going to be dumped on the markets. For 6 long years under this bill we are going to have gross overproduction, we are going to drive prices down, and we are going to have all kinds of commodities in storage. We are going to have all the excesses we had under the farm bill prior to the bill that we are considering here. But that doesn't seem to be enough. This bill brings new commodities into these programs. We eliminated some of these programs before but now they are brought back to life. It seems to me the bottom line of this bill is that it is going to guarantee overproduction--I am sorry this is going to happen because I think it is going to be very harmful to rural America. It is going to guarantee depressed prices, and it is going to mean increased Government interventions to try to limit production. So the Government, once again, is going to be telling people what to grow and what not to grow. I think that is a step in the wrong direction. This bill also allows people who came to America illegally to get food stamps. I am opposed to that. I am not trying to be hardhearted. But there is a very real problem when you give benefits to people who violate the law--you encourage them to violate the law. When the Senate debated this bill, I offered a compromise which was adopted. That compromise said anybody who has been here for 5 years and is now here legally can qualify for food stamps, but that no one who comes and stays here illegally for one year or more can qualify. The reason I offered this compromise is because we want people to come to America who want to work. We want people to come to America with their sleeves rolled up, not with their hand held out. It fundamentally changes America when you do that. Having a provision that says you can come here illegally and still get food stamps is like putting a neon sign up on the border that says: Violate the law. Come into America illegally, and we will give you food stamps. Let me sum up by saying I am not saying this bill is the embodiment of all evil. There are some good things in this bill. Doing away with the old peanut quota, God knows, was a good thing. But I believe we are paying people too much to buy out the old quota. The point is: Having the Government limit the ability of people to grow peanuts makes absolutely no sense. But by setting these loan rates so high, we are going to end up with a peanut-like program in all of these other areas over the next 6 years because we are not going to be able to pay for this program. Finally, we said when we adopted the bill that it was going to cost $73 billion. It turned out that it cost $82 billion. Every penny of that will come right out of Social Security. We have colleagues who stand up on the floor day after day saying don't spend the Social Security surplus. When you vote for this farm bill, you are spending the Social Security surplus. Not everything in this bill is bad. There are some improvements in the bill. But, overall, it is a move back to Government control of agriculture. Is there a silver lining in this? I think there is. I think this will probably be the last farm bill we pass. I think what has happened is, thanks to the Internet, people understand that while we talk about the small farmer, the fact is the top 10 percent of the people are getting 37 times as much in Government payments as the small farmer. This bill goes so far that it tilts the balance. In the end, I think this will undo this type farm bill, and in the long run it is good for America. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we have attempted to really get the process going on trade promotion authority for a week now, with little or no success. I think today we moved completely in the wrong direction. I am, for the first time, becoming concerned that we may not be successful in our effort. I wanted to come to the floor today to talk about it. Had we brought the trade promotion authority bill to the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, the bill that was reported on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote--I think 18 to 3 out of committee--and if we could have had an up-or-down vote on it, my guess is that some 70 Members of the Senate would have voted for trade promotion authority. And the vote ought to be 100. If there is anything I think we have learned in the history of mankind, it is that trade works, that trade promotes economic growth, it promotes better jobs, it expands freedom, it is something that all enlightened opinion speaks in favor of; yet it is something that, throughout history, has been under assault. It is hard to understand trade, and it is so easy to argue against it. Every special interest can cloak itself in the American flag and argue against trade. It reminds me of the writing of a French economist, who, as individual industries were getting protection from foreign competition in France while England was blossoming economically through free trade--a famous French economist wrote a petition to the economic ministry that was granting all these exceptions for one industry after another, basically arguing that they had to protect dairy products because they had so many jobs tied to it--tending the cattle, and all of the people who service the industry--and they had to protect this industry to protect that. So this famous economist wrote a petition on behalf of candlemakers, arguing that they were disadvantaged in selling their products because of the Sun, which had an unfair competitive advantage: It seemed to produce light for nothing--in overwhelming quantities. Anyway, to make a long story short, he goes into this elaborate argument about how France could become rich from all the people who would be employed in making candles if they would just pass a law requiring people to pull their shutters closed during the day and to pull down their shades so that they would have to buy more candles. What was interesting about his petition was that it made exactly as much sense as all the other petitions that had been granted. The point is that trade doesn't help every individual producer under every individual circumstance, but it helps the whole, it helps society. We live in a golden age today. We live in an age where consumer goods, relative to our wages, are the cheapest they have ever been in the history of mankind. The other day I put a shovel in a truck, and someone had gone somewhere in the truck. I needed the shovel, but I had a limited amount of time. So I went to the hardware store to buy another shovel--complaining about how stupid I had been for leaving it in the truck. I should have paid attention. I had only one day to do what I was going to do. So I went there to buy a shovel, and I bought a shovel for $4.52. I submit that never, since man first emerged from the Garden of Eden, has any citizen anywhere bought a quality shovel for less than I paid for it at the hardware store. Today, we all benefit from world trade. I never will forget, as a boy, as an economic student, when the professor explained comparative advantage and the gains from trade. It didn't take me long to figure out these were powerful ideas that people didn't understand. It is so easy for a Member to stand up and say: We buy products from some country, but they don't buy that product from us. But I could say that I buy groceries from Safeway, but they don't buy anything from me. I have a totally one-way trade with Safeway. I could claim that that was unfair trade. I could stop buying groceries from grocery stores since they don't buy anything from me. I could plant my little backyard in vegetables. But the price I would pay would be poverty. The point is, there is no issue we have debated in this Congress, or any Congress, related to the material well-being of our people--which I separate from things like our political freedom--there is no issue that we have debated that is more important than trade. Trade won the cold war. Trade and the wealth that it created, the wealth machine it generated rebuilt Japan and Europe after World War II. Trade created wealth in Taiwan and Korea where it had never existed. In the process, it destroyed the Soviet Union. It gave more freedom to more people than any victory in any war in the history of mankind. The first point I am trying to make is, trade is very important and trade promotion authority, giving our President the tools he needs to negotiate and create more good jobs in America through trade, is something that every Member of the Senate ought to be for, and thank goodness, a large number of our Members are for it. If that had been the issue before us, we could have finished our business on Tuesday. But for some reason, the majority decided they were unwilling to let the Senate vote on trade promotion authority alone and that they were going to add other legislation to it, most importantly, trade adjustment assistance. Whereas the trade promotion authority bill came out of the Finance Committee on a strong bipartisan vote, the trade adjustment assistance bill actually passed the committee after the expiration of the two-hour rule. It was totally a partisan procedure, and it is a very contentious bill. I could go into great length about what is in it, but the point I wish to make today is that we have been negotiating, I believe, in good faith in trying to come up with an agreement that would let us move forward and pass this most important legislation--trade promotion authority. In the midst of these negotiations, yesterday Senator Daschle offered this amendment. The astounding thing is that a huge amount of this amendment represents material that not only is not in the trade promotion authority bill but is not in the trade adjustment assistance bill. And there are totally new issues that have not been discussed in the context of fast track before. These represent basically an undercutting of the whole process of trying to negotiate a compromise. I understand that to legislate, it requires a compromise. Nobody gets everything they want. I do not think it is asking too much to have a straight up-or-down vote on trade promotion authority, something as important as that, but now we find hidden in this amendment a provision whereby to get trade promotion authority, we are going to have to cover legacy costs for the steel industry. This provision was not part of trade adjustment assistance, but suddenly out of nowhere, if you are part of the legacy cost to the steel industry, you are going to get a brand new entitlement benefit under this program. Never in our negotiations has there been talk about wage insurance. Let me explain this concept and let me explain how trade adjustment assistance works. First, under the current law, if I lose my job because lightening strikes the building I am in and destroys the Capitol or a terrorist attack destroys the business, I get unemployment insurance until I can find a new job. But if foreign competition can be blamed for me losing my job, I get a totally different set of benefits, far richer, far more valuable. Quite frankly, I never understood why Americans ought to be treated differently based on why they lose their jobs. If they are Americans and they lose their jobs and Government provides programs, it seems to me they ought to get the same benefits. I do not understand treating people differently, but I long ago have concluded that my view is hopelessly in the minority on that issue. Now we are talking about adding new benefits to the differential, and I want to talk about two issues in particular. The first I mentioned is this whole steel legacy issue, and it really boils down to the following thing: Sad as it is, painful as it is, the American steel industry promised benefits that they never intended to pay, that they never had the resources to pay, and now, having negotiated all of these gold-plated benefits, principally to their retirees, when the bill has come due, these companies, many of them still in business, many of them that have equity values on the New York Stock Exchange are saying: Look, we cannot pay these benefits; we agreed to them, but we cannot pay them, so we want the taxpayers to pay them. Now we have a proposal out of the clear blue sky added to the ransom that we are supposed to pay to get trade promotion authority passed. We have this requirement that these steel legacy costs come under trade adjustment assistance. I say to my colleagues, when you are in the business we are in, you never say never; you never say that something is not going to happen. But let me put it this way: We may adopt a bill that funds steel legacy costs as tribute or bribery or ransom to get trade promotion authority, but it is not going to happen soon and it is not going to happen easily. Within every limit of every rule of the Senate, I assure my colleagues, we are going to fight this. And if in the end, God forbid, but if in the end it were a choice between trade promotion authority, which we need, which is vitally important and which I am 100 percent committed to, if I had to choose between trade promotion authority and paying steel legacy costs to get it, the answer is no, it is not worth it. It is absolutely not worth it. If we were talking from now until Jesus came back, I do not know that I would be so quick to make that statement. But we know we are going to have a new Congress next year. We might actually have a Republican majority in that Congress. To simply come in and ask the taxpayers to pick up all these legacy costs for operating American businesses that promised benefits they could not and they never intended to pay, in many cases, is so outrageous it is piracy on such a scale that, in my opinion, it is not worth paying, not even for trade promotion authority. Let me talk about wage insurance. I remind everybody that currently in our trade promotion authority bill only about one out of every four Americans who lose their jobs where it can in any way be related to trade claim benefits under trade promotion authority. About three- fourths of them simply go on about their business and get other jobs, but about one out of every four take trade adjustment assistance benefits. Under this bill, we create a brand new benefit which will guarantee that almost everyone will participate in the program. As a result, the cost of the program will skyrocket. This is a brand new entitlement, and what it says is, if you earn less than $40,000 a year when you lose your job, when that can be in any way related to trade, the Government is going to guarantee your wage, and so you will take a new job and the Government will come along and pay a portion of the difference between the wage you had in your old job and the wage you have in your new job. This is a brand new entitlement program, potentially explosive in its costs. The idea we are suddenly going to start insuring people's wages represents a step toward Government domination of the marketplace that we have never seen before. This is a provision that cannot be in any final compromise. I will sum up because I know the distinguished ranking member of the committee is present. I know he wants to speak. I do not think we are moving in the right direction. I thought it was a mistake, I believe it is a mistake, and I believe many of my colleagues will not support tying trade adjustment assistance with all of these new entitlement programs to trade promotion authority. Now we are having all of these new benefits in the trade adjustment assistance bill, benefits the cost of which no one knows. I hear my colleagues say we are running a deficit, we are spending the Social Security trust fund, what an outrage it is, but yet today we have an amendment before us offered by the majority leader that would create massive new entitlements that, clearly, would end up costing billions, perhaps tens of billions of dollars, and no one seems the least bit concerned. No one seems concerned that we are creating all these new entitlements that will change worker behavior, that will induce people not to move to new jobs, that will disrupt the economy and in the process create this incredible situation where people who are working have no guarantee of wages but people who are unemployed do; people who are working do not have a guarantee of health insurance but people who are unemployed have a Government guarantee. How can we tax people who are working, who have no wage guarantee and who have no health insurance, how can we justify taxing them to pay benefits to people who are unemployed who are not working? I do not see how such a guarantee can be made. Ultimately, what we are talking about is a European-type system, where we are going to guarantee health coverage ultimately to everybody, where we are going back and bailing out the steel industry to simply get the right to vote on trade promotion authority, and where we are beginning to write guaranteed wages into the American economy. The President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today in the paper said it well, I think, that we are reaching the point where the price we are being asked to pay for trade promotion authority is simply too high; it is unacceptable. So I urge my colleagues to--and let me speak to my colleagues on my side of the aisle. I am never going to support these provisions. I am never going to support bailing out the steel industry as a price for trade promotion authority. I am not going to support a wage insurance program. Every country in the world that has such a program, that has the least bit of economic development, is trying to get out of it. Europe has not created a job in 30 years because of their wage insurance program and the inflexibility that produces. So if you ever get a job, you are protected, but in Europe people do not get new jobs unless somebody dies or retires. That is not what we want in America. So I think this has to be rejected. I do not think this represents any kind of good-faith offer. I think this undercuts what we have been trying to do, and I think we are moving in the wrong direction. We are going to hear today from many of my colleagues who have been involved in this debate. I am for trade promotion authority, and I understand piracy. I understand that often in the legislative process one has to do a lot of things they do not want to do to do some good, but the price we are being asked to pay in the Daschle amendment is too high. Not even trade, as great as it is, is worth the tribute we are being asked to pay in this amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, will the Senator yield to me for a moment?

Mr. GRAMM. I appreciate the Senator yielding. There is not going to be a unanimous consent agreement on the Dorgan amendment. We are not going to do a time limit on it. We are not going to vote on it today.

Mr. GRAMM. That is fine. I am saying we are not going to have a unanimous consent agreement today on that amendment or any other amendment.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, to this point, I have not come over and spoken on the issue before us; which is trade promotion authority, and then all of the little cars that have been attached to this big, powerful, important engine. So while we are in the midst of doing these negotiations, I want to simply make a few points. Let me, first, say that I take a back seat to no Member of the Senate and to no one in public life in supporting trade. I am a free trader. I support trade. I think it is the most powerful engine for economic development in history. I would support a free trade policy worldwide. I am for trade promotion authority. When Bill Clinton was President, I said it was an outrage that we did not give him trade promotion authority. And I think it is an outrage that we have not yet given it to President Bush. I am very hopeful we are going to give it to him. In fact, I am confident we are going to give it to him. But I am a little bit concerned because what we have is sort of a gamesmanship going on. I guess ``hostage taking'' would be the best analogy people would understand. We have historically had a situation where the House has been very questionable on the trade issue. Congressional districts tend to be small, especially in big States, and it is easy for individual Members to have very parochial interests. It is much harder for Senators because every Senator is a farm State Senator, every Senator has a diversity of economic activity in their State. The net result of that is--not that Senators are wiser people than Members of the House; I doubt if they are--we have consistently had over 70 Senators who have been pro-trade on issues we have used as measures of trade: giving trade promotion authority, giving WTO membership to China, and other trade-related issues. So when the House passed trade promotion authority, in an extraordinary act of political leadership--I would have to say that never in my adult lifetime have we had leadership in the House of Representatives as effective as the leadership team is today--never. Their leadership, in passing trade promotion authority, was nothing short of extraordinary. But once they did that, it was obvious to a blind man that we were going to pass trade promotion authority. And then the question became, When and under what circumstances? We passed a bill in the Finance Committee by an overwhelmingly bipartisan majority to send trade promotion authority to the floor. I would have to say our trade promotion authority bill has some sort of silly statements in it, almost nonsensical. But the substance of the bill is excellent. I congratulate the chairman and the ranking member. America is not going to get anything but richer, freer, and happier if we adopt this trade promotion authority bill, and adopt it just as it is written. I do not intend to support an amendment to it. If all we were doing were bringing trade promotion authority to the floor, my guess is, in the end, we would get about 70 votes. But now, extraordinarily, we have people on my side of the aisle, who have never voted for trade before, who are saying: Well, I will vote for trade promotion authority if you will add all these new entitlements, all these new, committed, long-term spending programs. Well, great, but we already have 20 too many votes. Lyndon Johnson used to say: If you can get more than 55 votes in the Senate, you gave away too much. So I appreciate people who are willing to become the 71st or 72nd, but the idea that we are going to put on all these new spending programs, that will help bankrupt the country in the future, to get 71 votes instead of 70, that is a nonstarter to me. I also say to our Democrat colleagues, they need to pass this bill as badly as we need to pass it because this bill is in America's interest. When the votes are cast, we are probably going to get 44 or so, I guess, Republicans to vote for it, and my guess is we are going to get 26, 27, 28 Democrats, after all is said and done, on a clean bill. Republicans are more pro-trade than Democrats. But, look, Democrats do not want to go to the high-tech industry of this country, which is critically dependent on exports, and say: We killed fast track when the House passed it. Now, why do I go to all this trouble to say both sides of the aisle are for this bill? The reason I do is, now that it is clear this bill is going to pass--it is going to pass by a big vote--all of a sudden people are saying, well, look, we will not vote for it unless you pay tribute, unless you take some totally extraneous issue to trade promotion authority, and combine it, and create these massive new benefits for people--and I am going to talk about that in just a moment--unless you do that, we are not going to vote for it. The point is, if we had a clean vote on trade promotion authority, under the worst of circumstances, it would pass. It is true that the majority probably could tie this up in parliamentary knots, and this could go on and on and on, but who is kidding--I started to say, who is kidding whom, but I am not sure that is proper grammar. This reminds me of the O. Henry story, Ransom of Red Chief, where a couple of lowlifes kidnap a child, and this kid is a terrible brat. So they contact the kid's parents asking for ransom, and they say, no, they don't want him back. And so the kidnappers are stuck with this kid. The story ends with the kidnappers paying the parents to take the child back. That is the game we have underway here. Our distinguished majority leader is saying to us: If we don't pass this new entitlement, we are not going to pass trade promotion authority. Some people may be fooled, but I am not fooled. I want to pass trade promotion authority, and I want to pass it because I believe in it. But I don't believe I want to pass it any worse than the majority leader wants to pass it. This bluff may work. But I am a firm believer, if you know people aren't going to shoot the hostage, don't pay the bribe. Now, let's talk about the bribe. Here is where we are. We currently have a law called trade adjustment assistance. In my opinion it is fundamentally wrong. What it says is the following: We have two workers, Joe and Sarah. Sarah works for a company that is destroyed in a terrorist attack, and Joe works for a company that becomes noncompetitive and shuts down and is able to claim that foreign competition had something to do with it. The person who works for the company that was destroyed in a terrorist attack gets unemployment insurance. That is it. But the person who works for the company that became noncompetitive--something that employee may well have had something to do with--gets much more generous benefits. I don't understand that. We have two Americans. They both work for companies.

Mr. GRAMM. I ask unanimous consent for 10 additional minutes.

Mr. GRAMM. We have two workers in America. They both work. They are both citizens. They are both guaranteed under the Constitution equal protection of the law. Yet the worker whose business is destroyed in a terrorist attack--something they have had no ability to have any impact on--gets one set of benefits. But a person who works for a company that becomes noncompetitive and goes out of business gets an entirely different and more generous set of benefits, even though we might argue at the margin--and I am not arguing it, but you might argue--that maybe they could have had potentially some effect on it, whereas a worker with a company that is destroyed by terrorism could have had no effect on it. I have always been struck with this trade adjustment assistance, how it can make sense to treat people differently, both of whom are unemployed, simply because one lost their job to foreign competition or can claim it, and the other one can't. Forget all that. That is an old injustice. I hadn't gotten over it. Maybe I should have. But now we come along with a new trade adjustment assistance bill that says, in addition to this more generous benefit package, we are going to give it not just to people who lose their jobs to foreign competition, we are going to give it to people who say their job was related to the job that was lost because they were suppliers, or that their job was related to the job that was lost because they were selling things to the people who lost their jobs. I guess in the extreme, if you are a dairyman and people at this factory were buying milk, you could claim trade adjustment assistance. Then they add a brand new extraordinary benefit, and that is the Government is now going to pay 73 percent of your health insurance when you are unemployed. In fact, one of our colleagues today said that is the amount you get if you are a Senator. Well, lose your election and find out how much you get--zip, zero. Here is the point: How can we justify taxing workers who don't get health insurance in their jobs when they are working to provide 73 percent of the health care cost for people who are unemployed? When we don't have health insurance for many people who are working, how can we justify taxing them to pay for benefits for people who are unemployed? And if we provide this benefit, A, we are going to have to pay for it. And, B, how can we justify not giving it to people who are working when we are giving it to people who are not working? Currently only about one out of every four people who qualify for trade adjustment assistance take the benefit. Most of them don't take it because it is more generous than unemployment, but it is generally not as good as getting another job. I would say if you lost your job to trade, trade promotes jobs generally, your chances of getting another job in the economy are probably better. But in any case, I think the question we have to ask ourselves is the following: If one-fourth of the people who are eligible take the benefits now, don't you think the number will go up when the Government is going to pay 73 percent of their health care costs? My guess is we might even see as much as a quadrupling of the people who take trade adjustment assistance. We get numbers tossed around about how many billions of dollars this new benefit will cost. But nobody knows because we don't know how we are going to change behavior with it. And how many people who now go out and get a new job would not go out and get a new job if they have 73 percent of their health care costs being paid for while they are unemployed? These are questions to which we have no answers. I remind my colleagues, last week we discovered that a budget that had a huge surplus last year was $130 billion in deficit this year, with us spending every penny of the Social Security surplus. Our colleagues often like to talk about it. They want to protect the Social Security surplus. Yet we are talking about imposing a rider on this trade bill that is going to cost billions of dollars, and every penny of it is going to come right out of the Social Security surplus. Much of it is going to be borrowed. My view is that we should not pass this bill with this provision on it. It is subject to a point of order, or at least I believe it will be if we ever see the bill. It seems to me it is perfectly consistent--in fact, I think it is the definition of consistency--if we believe we need trade promotion authority and we ought to have a freestanding vote on it, and then if the Senate wants to bring up trade adjustment assistance, it ought to do that. But the idea of tying the two together--they didn't come out of the Finance Committee together--is fundamentally wrong. There are a whole lot of other problems. For some reason, our Democrat colleagues have concluded that while we are going to pay 71 percent of the health care bills for the people who are drawing this trade adjustment assistance, we are not going to let them choose their health insurance. Freedom is dangerous. If we start letting them choose their health insurance, God knows what they are going to want to be able to choose next. So, extraordinarily, there is a provision in this bill that says you have to buy exactly the same insurance you had when you had a job and your company was a big part of buying the health insurance. How many people who are unemployed--say you lost your job with General Motors where they are notorious for having benefits such as first-dollar coverage--how many people want to be forced to buy that same benefit when they are unemployed? Doesn't it seem logical to you that if you are unemployed, you might take a higher deductible so the money you got from the Government would buy you a larger share of your cost, so that the 29 percent you would have had to pay could go to help send your children to college or buy a training program? Why do we have to make people buy the Cadillac health insurance policy when they are unemployed, when they might choose to buy the Chevrolet policy? I have a very hard time understanding those who would impose this on us saying, no, you cannot let these people choose. My position is, if you are going to provide this benefit, which, A, I don't believe we can afford and, B, I don't know how you justify giving to some people and not others, why not let them pick and choose the health care coverage that is best for them? Why not allow them to buy a Chevrolet policy when they were getting a Cadillac policy--when the company was paying for almost all of it--when it is partly their money? I don't understand why we have to do that. So I wanted to come over today to simply make a these points: One, I am for trade promotion authority. Two, I think we ought to pass it as a clean bill. Three, I assume there will be a point of order against trade adjustment assistance, and it would be my intention to make the point of order against that provision. There is not a point of order against trade promotion authority. So I am hopeful we can come to some accommodation. Finally, the one thing you learn when you are a member of a legislative body, such as the Senate, is that seldom do you get things the way you want them, that almost always there is some kind of compromise. I think we should pass trade promotion authority freestanding. But if we do end up with a compromise on trade adjustment assistance, I think we are a long way from being there. I think it needs to be very narrowly defined to be benefits for people who really lose their job due strictly to trade. I think you have to make this benefit affordable, remembering you are going to be taxing working people, who don't get health insurance, to buy Cadillac coverage for people who are unemployed. How can anybody believe that is rational? How would you justify at a town meeting if some guy stood up and said: I don't get it. I work at the local company that sells tires, and I change tires, and I don't get health insurance through my job. But you are taxing me to buy first-dollar-coverage health insurance for somebody who is unemployed. Why do you treat unemployed people better than you treat employed people? I don't get it. I am not going to have to answer that question because I am going to say it is stupid, typical of Government, and I am not for it. Of course, normally, somebody back in the corner says: Yeah, but you were there when it happened. It always bugs me when that happens. But it hasn't happened yet, and I am going to do my best to see that it doesn't happen. I wanted to cover all these issues. I hope we can get on with trade promotion authority. I hope we can work something out. I know the President wants this. There have been more than 130 trade agreements reached worldwide, to date, of which we are not a part. When our trading partner, Mexico, has entered into nine free trade agreements covering 26 countries and the U.S. has entered into three trade agreements, NAFTA, Israel and Jordan, covering four countries, and when we have not entered into these trade agreements because we don't have trade promotion authority, something is wrong. This is the greatest trading country in the history of the world. I hope we can get on and pass the bill in a rational way. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask to be recognized, then, to speak.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, are we now in a period of morning business?

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

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I would be very happy to have my remarks in morning business.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me remind my colleagues of a couple things. First, this is a revenue bill.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, when we resume consideration of the energy bill later today, we will be on a revenue measure. As all of my colleagues know, the Constitution gives a special privilege to the House of Representatives by requiring all money bills to originate in the House. This represents a constraint on the Senate in terms of voting on tax issues because in order to have a vote on a tax issue that could actually become law, you have to have a vote on a bill that is already a revenue measure and has been passed by the House. So this means the bill before us, in addition to being an energy bill, becomes a very important bill because it will contain energy tax provisions, and therefore will be a revenue bill. I have now about 15 Members of the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, who are determined to have a vote on making the death tax repeal permanent. I will not repeat the whole debate because we will have plenty of opportunity to talk about it--we have in the past and will have in the future. But we have the anomaly that the tax cut passed last year will expire in 10 years because of a budget technicality that was in place when it was adopted. And this creates the incredible anomaly that while we are phasing out the death tax now, 9 years from now it will spring back in full force and will ensure that families that worked to build up a business or a family farm would end up having to sell that business or sell that farm to give the Government 55 cents out of every dollar of its value upon the death of the people who created it before it can be passed on to their children. We have every right, on any revenue measure, to offer any amendment we wish. That is how the rules of the Senate work. On Thursday, I had called for regular order--which brought up Senator Kerry's amendment with Senator McCain--and I offered my amendment to it. I was unaware at the time that discussions were going on as to how we were going to proceed from there. As it turned out, Senator Kerry came over and withdrew his amendment. At that point, the distinguished Democrat floor leader filled up the amendment tree by offering a second-degree amendment to the next amendment under regular order. I think there were about nine amendments that had been set aside as we went on to consider other measures. In working with our leadership and, through their discussions, with the leadership on the Democrat side, I have now proposed in writing an agreement whereby we would agree to forgo the ability to offer an amendment on this bill to make death tax repeal permanent, if we could have a guarantee that at some point in the future we would get such a vote. The proposal I have made is that we pull up H.R. 8, which is on the Senate Calendar. It, in fact, is a bill to repeal the death tax. I hope it will be looked at. We feel very strongly we ought to have the right to offer this amendment. This is a revenue measure. We have no guarantee there will be another revenue measure considered by the Senate this year. I know there are people in the Finance Committee--and I am privileged to serve on that committee--who hope we will have other opportunities. But it may well be that this is the only opportunity we have this year. As my colleagues are aware, the House of Representatives has voted to make the whole tax cut permanent. We want to have a vote on making the death tax repeal permanent. I am hoping that something can be done to accommodate us in terms of our right. I know there are many people who want to finish this bill. There are things in the bill I am for, but I don't know of anything that is more important than making the repeal of the death tax permanent. I wanted my colleagues to know that we do have a growing number of people who are working to achieve this goal. It would be our objective. I think there are two amendments the managers of the bill wanted to do this afternoon that we have agreed to step aside and allow them to do. But beyond that point, it would be our intent to object to bringing up new amendments or to setting aside the pending amendment until we get some agreement. We don't have to do our amendment now, but we want to be guaranteed that at some point we will have our right as Senators to offer an amendment related to making the repeal of the death tax permanent. I came over today to simply outline that there is the beginning of a discussion on how to accommodate Senators who wish to offer this amendment. I have talked to our leader, and nothing would make me happier than to get a guarantee that we will get a vote on making repeal of the death tax permanent. In that case, we would get out of the way and allow consideration of the energy tax amendment and adopt it, perhaps on a voice vote.

Mr. GRAMM. I am happy to yield.