Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I think I have pretty well said everything I came to say. Let me yield back my time and then if someone else wants to speak, they can come speak. If not, we can just remain in a quorum call until we are ready to vote. With that, let me yield back the remainder of my time, seeing the distinguished majority leader.

Mr. GRAMM. I yield the distinguished ranking member 15 minutes.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, it may very well be that the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee would like to end the debate. I will afford him that courtesy. Let me just try to sum up very briefly by saying I am hopeful we can work together on a bipartisan basis to have trade promotion authority. There is no temporal issue that I have stronger feelings about than trade. I see it as an extension of freedom. I see it as the great promoter of economic opportunity and prosperity and happiness in the world. I am in favor of world free trade. Obviously, I am in favor of free trade with any individual nation. There are very real problems when you bring domestic law into these trade agreements, and I have outlined today the two problems you have in trying to inject, in this case, domestic labor law, domestic environmental law, and then the enforcement of those laws through regulation. When you bring them into trade agreements, you create two very real problems: First, you give an extraordinary grant of power to the executive branch of Government to write domestic laws in a context where Congress' powers to debate and amend are severely limited; and, second, you pass decisionmaking authority, as to America's intent and as to the impact of the making of domestic law, to an international decisionmaking unit. And you create a situation where literally, with strong popular support, with the best of intentions, with the goal of promoting the well-being of our people--and the only legitimate objective of American Government is to promote the well-being of its people--we could find ourselves in a situation where a change in a labor or an environmental law was judged by an international decisionmaking body or dispute resolution mechanism to benefit us in trade, and I would hope that would be one of our objectives in passing law. But by judging it in those terms, we could literally have tariffs imposed on any American product sold on the world market, and the net result would be severe limits on our national sovereignty. These are very real issues. They are not easy to fix. If you are going to extend trade promotion authority into the area of domestic law--in this case, labor and environment--my own preference would be, knowing that trade promotes the environment, knowing that trade promotes labor rights by promoting competition, the ultimate right of a worker comes down to their ability to quit and go get another job. That is the ultimate worker right: I do not have to worry about somebody protecting my rights and treating me well when I can go across the street. Trade promotes that kind of competition. But there are two sides to every story. I know the distinguished chairman has very different views, at least on what he hopes to achieve with labor and environmental provisions. I conclude by saying I am willing to try to work with him to come up with a way of finding a solution to this problem so that we can give the President trade promotion authority at a time when we desperately need it, at a time when we need to be promoting world prosperity, and at a time when we need to be promoting democracy and capitalism, because democracy and capitalism do not give rise to the kind of hate that endangers us and our people and our future and our happiness. I do think it is important that we work this out. But these are very real issues, very tough issues. Let me conclude by saying that in having this bill go forward, from my own viewpoint, this is a decision that was made based on the necessity of approving this agreement now as we are looking at a long and difficult war on terrorism, a trade agreement that in the big scheme of economics is not very important, but the country with which we are entering into this agreement is a critical country, critical for American interests in the Middle East. And it is in the Middle East that many of our problems with world terrorism are focused. Without setting a precedent for this labor and environmental extension into trade or loss of sovereignty or violating the separation of powers, I intend to support the agreement. I reiterate, in conclusion, that I am willing to work with anybody to try to find a way to get trade promotion authority for the President. It would be a great tragedy if we adjourn this year without the President having this authority. It is an arrow in his quiver that he needs to fight this war. We are not going to win this war just with bullets, though we need some bullets and we need them properly delivered. However many we need, I am willing to buy. That alone will not win this war. Trade and the mutual respect it creates will be important tools, as important as bullets in winning this war. This trade promotion authority is very important, but to deal with it, we have to come to grips with these issues. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I rise today to support the Jordanian free trade agreement, but I support it with reservations. I am determined that the adoption of this agreement not set a precedent for the future. What I would like to try to do, even though I know it may take a little time to do so, is explain to my colleagues the problems with this agreement, the problem that we have when we bring non-trade matters into fast track, and the very real sovereignty questions that are raised by this small and seemingly insignificant trade agreement. I would like to try to explain the logic of fast track and its history and, within that context, make it clear that, in the current international crisis in which we find ourselves, I have decided to withdraw my opposition to this agreement and, in the process, see it become law. In withdrawing that opposition in a moment of crisis where we need to reconfirm our bond of friendship with Jordan, I wish to make it very clear that in doing this we are not setting a precedent for the future. Now, having outlined all that, let me start at the beginning and try to explain the logic of fast track and the problems we are going to have to address. The plain truth is that no one wants to address these issues, but they are there whether we like them or not. Therefore, at some point, we are going to have to come to grips with them when we adopt a bill that will provide what we used to call fast-track authority and now call trade promotion authority. Let me begin at the beginning. America, in the postwar period, immediately following World War II, recognized that world trade was a powerful engine for creating wealth and democracy and, in essence, remaking the world in our image. We had an incredible bipartisan consensus on trade: that neither party would try to use trade to politically benefit itself in the American electoral process because trade was too important in promoting prosperity and democracy and in fighting communism in the postwar period. In that context, we adopted what was then called fast-track trade authority, which gave the Executive some remarkable powers. Under fast track, a President could negotiate a trade agreement which, when it came before Congress, would be unamendable, and all of the Senate rules related to unlimited debate and unlimited amendment would be waived; further, there would be a time limit for consideration, and Congress would then simply have the ability to vote yes or no. That made sense in the following context: No. 1, Presidents argued, and I believe persuasively, that if you are going to negotiate a trade agreement where both sides give and take, you cannot then have that agreement be subject to further change, by Congress, after the fact. That is a persuasive argument, in my opinion. The second argument was that we were talking about a limitation of the constitutional prerogatives of Congress under article I of the Constitution, and we had agreed to limit those powers because we were talking about only external matters, such as protective tariffs. We were not making domestic law, but were simply setting out trade agreements that involved external pricing of American and foreign products but did not make law in America that would govern the well- being of our people. With those two very strong arguments, we adopted fast-track authority, and let me say, the evidence is overwhelming that we were successful. When the Berlin Wall came down, it came down in part because we had the resolve to keep Ivan back from the gate, we were strong enough to deter a war, and our program of peace through strength worked. But what happened that really tore the wall down was that the growth of world trade generated a wealth-creating engine that created massive economies in places such as South Korea and Taiwan where those economic engines had never existed. It rebuilt Japan. It rebuilt Europe. The sheer power of that wealth-creating machine destroyed the Soviet Union. If there is one principle I am committed to, it is free trade. I take a back seat to no one in Congress in my defense of trade, and I make no excuses, such as talk about ``fair trade.'' I do not engage in fair trade with a grocery store; I buy food from them and sell them nothing. But what I am in favor of is trade. Not going to the grocery store might eliminate unfair trade with them, but it would mean I might go hungry, so I choose to go to the grocery store. One might wonder what is it about the Jordanian ``free trade'' agreement that I am unhappy about, especially my colleagues who have listened to me before talk about trade, knowing I am committed to it and have defended it under all circumstances against all opponents everywhere. What is wrong with the Jordanian free trade agreement? What is wrong is, for the first time, it brings into a trade agreement items that have to do with domestic law. It brings into a free trade agreement provisions that relate to labor law and labor standards, and environmental law and environmental standards, in America. And in the process, we are literally transferring a degree of American sovereignty in labor and environmental areas to decision- making entities that will be beyond the control of the United States. This is a very serious matter. Let me talk generically about trade agreements that embody labor and environmental standards and then talk about this one in particular. When we built a consensus on fast-track authority, the consensus was based in part on the fact that the President was negotiating trade agreements, tariffs. It was clear that the intent of the negotiation was to lower tariffs on foreign goods coming into our economy and lower tariffs on American goods going into the economy of the country with which we entered these trade agreements. That was the understanding. It was clearly understood that, within that context, we were simply negotiating tariffs but not making domestic law. Someone who was going to debate this would immediately point out that in the last 10 years we have injected another issue: patent and copyright. They would say: We were already a little bit pregnant when we did that because that had a binding effect on America in terms of respecting patents and copyrights. I think that might score you a point in some debating class in high school or college, but the plain truth is, America is in the patent and copyright business. We own 90 percent of all the patents and copyrights in the world, and so when we negotiated to put into free trade agreements that countries would respect patent and copyright, that basically was a provision that had no effect on us because we owned the patents and copyrights, but it had an effect on our trading partners by committing them, at least through moral suasion, if not retaliation, to respecting patent rights and copyrights. I would argue that element in free trade agreements was pretty much like Britain being for freedom of the seas when they controlled the seas because they had the world's greatest navy. They were for British seas, just as we should be for freedom of the seas today. Two substantial problems arise when labor and environmental issues, or any other issue related to the laws under which we live and function every day in the United States, are brought into this fast-track process. One is a loss of power by Congress in ceding its rights under article I of the Constitution, and the other is a loss of American sovereignty, and they are both bad things. When you allow the President to negotiate labor and environmental laws, and labor and environmental standards, under fast-track authority, where the agreement cannot be debated and cannot be amended, what you are literally doing is giving the President of the United States a unilateral power to write domestic law under fast-track authority. Under fast-track authority, where the President has this power to write labor and environmental standards into trade agreements, which then become the law of the land when we adopt them, President Clinton, for instance, in a free trade agreement, could literally have included the Kyoto Environmental Treaty. It would have come to the Senate. It would have been unamendable and undebatable, and we would have had a dramatic loss in our law-making powers, and a substantial diminution in the effectiveness of fast-track had the Senate been forced to reject the agreement because non-trade matters been included. If we had a President who wanted to change environmental or labor law, and do it in a way to limit congressional power and authority, he could do it unilaterally through fast track, through negotiations of trade agreements. We never, ever contemplated such an extension of power when we wrote fast track. Never did we contemplate the Executive would make domestic law in these trade agreements. They were about tariffs. They were not about laws that would govern America and Americans in our daily lives. The second problem with allowing labor and environmental provisions in trade agreements that have expedited consideration is they represent a ceding of American sovereignty. In my opinion, they are unconstitutional. Let me explain how this would work in the context of a bilateral agreement and then in the context of GATT. I'll start with GATT. Using fast-track authority where labor and environmental issues can be included, let us say that we entered into a GATT agreement where we agreed--as we do in this agreement, and I will talk about it in particular in a minute--on labor and environment provisions. Now, while we have to give the Clinton administration some credit for writing all kinds of boilerplate protections for congressional authority, in the end they could not protect what the provision is about. Under this bill, we agree with Jordan that we will not take any actions with regard to our labor or environmental laws that would advantage us in our trading with Jordan. Now, let me take those provisions and apply it to GATT and the World Trade Organization. Let us say this became the norm for trade agreements. Who decides whether a change in environmental law affects our competitive position with our trading partner? Who decides whether a change in regulation was made to benefit us in trade or because it was made through the Executive power of the President basically to promote the general well-being of the country? Is it not true, at least to a small degree, every change in environmental law and every change in labor law or regulation has a trade effect, making us more or less competitive? If we had the Jordanian free trade agreement as part of GATT, it is literally true, if we decided under the Clean Air Act to grant a clean air waiver to Atlanta, GA, which we have done in the past, and to Dallas, TX, which we are doing today, or Houston, which we are doing today, literally if this agreement were in existence as part of GATT a question would arise as to whether granting this waiver under the Clean Air Act benefited us in trade. In the case of GATT the judgment would be made by the World Trade Organization--a third party, a world organization, determining whether or not we are enforcing the Clean Air Act to benefit us in trade and, therefore, whether we should be penalized with protective tariffs against American products that put Americans out of work. If we had the provisions of this Jordanian free trade agreement in effect through GATT, and we then opened up ANWR to produce oil, the World Trade Organization and its decisionmaking body, which we are minority members of, could determine that by opening ANWR we have had degradation in environmental standards that benefit us in terms of trade and we could literally have protective tariffs imposed against American products on the world market and put Americans out of work. If we repealed Davis-Bacon, a special interest law that requires the Government to pay the highest prevailing wage for labor, it could be ruled by the World Trade Organization, if these provisions were in force worldwide, that we had violated the trade agreement, and we would then be subject to reprisal and punishment imposed on the American economy. If we adopted provisions that gave workers flexibility to work 60 hours one week and 20 hours the next week by changing our antiquated wage and hour laws so that a working mom could go see her son play football on Friday afternoon, something that is eminently reasonable and long overdue, if the provisions of this bill were in effect worldwide through the World Trade Organization, we could have a judgment by a world decisionmaking body that we have violated our trade agreements by giving flexibility under the wage and hour laws, flex- time/comp-time we call it; that we have benefited in trade and, therefore, we are subject to reprisal. My point is, as we go beyond the Jordanian free trade agreement, and as we go to fast-track authority and as this becomes part of our world trading system, I ask my colleagues, are we ready to give to the President of the United States unilateral authority to write domestic law we cannot amend and cannot debate? I am not ready to do that. I love our President. I do not think any Member of the Senate feels closer to our current President than I do, but I am not willing to give that authority to anybody. I do not know who is going to be President in the future. Are we willing, through a free trade agreement and through trade promotion authority, to put ourselves in a situation where the World Trade Organization can determine that by giving a waiver to Atlanta, GA, under the Clean Air Act, we are violating our international trade agreements and, therefore, protective tariffs can be imposed on American products to punish us for exercising our power under articles I and III of the Constitution? Is that not a loss of sovereignty that would be virtually unimaginable by the Founding Fathers? I think the answer is clearly yes. So the first point I wanted to make today is I have decided, just as one Member, to step aside and allow this Jordanian free trade agreement to become law, but not because I think these are good provisions. I think inclusion of these matters is one of the most dangerous actions we have taken since I have been a Member of the Senate. I am doing this today because we have a crisis in the world. We need to reaffirm our relationship with Jordan, a critical country in a very important part of the world, when we are at the very moment beginning to look toward a war with terrorism. So our relationship with Jordan is important. I do it also because our trade with Jordan is relatively insignificant. It is important to Jordan, of course, and we are grateful for it. We want to trade 1,000 times as much with them, but relatively speaking, we are not talking about any significant amount of trade. Finally, I am willing to do it, making it clear that this sets no precedent for the future. If it were not for this current crisis, this trade agreement negotiated by the Clinton administration would never have become the law of the land. I am willing, today, to step aside and vote for it because it sets no precedent, and it is clearly important internationally at this critical moment in a very important part of the world. However, I want my colleagues to understand that any efforts to take this process forward would entail giving the President unilateral powers to make domestic law in the labor and the environmental area without Congress having the ability to amend it or to extensively debate it. I am adamantly opposed to that, and I believe the American people would be opposed to it if they understood it. Second, if we go forward and embody the same provisions in major trade agreements, we are ceding sovereignty to the World Trade Organization and to dispute resolution organizations where we will literally have third parties casting the deciding votes as to whether we can grant waivers under the Clean Air Act, or open up ANWR, or change our wage and hour standards, or repeal Davis-Bacon, or do other things that make eminently good public policy. That is a ceding of sovereignty that has no popular support in this country, and it cannot be allowed to go forward. I turn to the Jordanian free trade agreement. First, if I could pick up this pen today and sign a free trade agreement with the world, I would do it. I am in favor of free trade. I believe free trade promotes freedom; I am for freedom. It promotes prosperity; I am for prosperity. My concern about the Jordanian agreement is the nontrade provisions. It has two provisions that may very well never be used in our trade with Jordan but they are extraordinarily dangerous. The first provision is related to the environment. It says, despite all the boilerplate efforts of the Clinton administration, that if either country--Jordan or the United States--did anything to change its environmental laws that improved its competitiveness with the other country, that would violate the trade agreement. Under the rules of world trade, there would then be a dispute resolution that would ultimately include a United States representative, a Jordanian representative, and a third party, which would determine whether a violation had occurred and, if so, whether the ``violating party'' would be subject to penalties. I understand the dollar value of our trade with Jordan is less than the combined budgets of the two great universities in my State. It is not significant in terms of the global picture. But principles are significant. And bad principles are set often in little, insignificant bills. This provision literally puts us in a position where an international dispute resolution could determine, in the name of the environment, that opening ANWR or granting waivers, which we do routinely under the Clean Air Act, violate this agreement, and we could have trade reprisals imposed against us as a result of it. If we didn't sell anything to Jordan, it would obviously matter to the companies involved. It would be a terrible thing, but economically it would not be a catastrophe. My objection to including these labor and environmental provisions is based on principle, and if inclusion of these issues goes any further and is established worldwide, it is going to have a profound impact on the lawmaking authority of the U.S. Congress. Now, granted the Clinton administration puts nice boilerplate language that says to Jordan, you make your own laws; and it says to the United States, you make your own laws. But it also says, if those laws are judged to improve your competitiveness as a result of a reduction in your level of environmental protection, then there can be reprisals. Who makes that determination? The problem is, the United States does not make that determination. That determination is made by an international dispute resolution system. The same is true in this bill with regard to labor law. Under this bill, you have an obvious question: When have you changed labor standards to benefit yourself in terms of competition? With Jordan, who makes the determination? I would have no objection if the determination of whether we were meeting our agreement were made by Americans. I think it would be foolish to get into this area, because everyone who is the least bit objective about trade understands, if you care about labor standards, you are for trade, because trading countries are rich, and they have high wages, and they have good working conditions. If you care about the environment, you are for trade, because trading countries are rich and they can protect their environment, and they do. I know we have people talking about a race to the bottom in labor and environmental standards, but the truth is, trade is a race to the top, not to the bottom. But these are the problems with this bill. Now people do not want to deal with this issue. It was clear in the Finance Committee, people were not ready to come to grips with this issue. What is appealing about putting labor and environmental provisions into the bill is that it lets us be on three sides of a two- sided issue. It lets us be with the people who want to have international labor and environmental standards, and yet be for trade. The problem is, you are either for trade or you are against it. When we write these provisions into our trade agreement, we are setting ourselves up for loss of sovereignty and we are ceding power to the executive branch of government. I think those are two extraordinarily dangerous things. This agreement will be approved today. I am going to support it. But I am going to support it as a matter of foreign policy. The President wants this agreement to show to Jordan we are committed to our friendship and our partnership. We need Jordan's support in this war on terrorism, and as a result, I, for one, intend to step aside and allow this agreement to be adopted. But in doing so, I want to make it clear that this sets no precedent in terms of our willingness to cede sovereignty over America's right to set its own environmental and labor laws and to interpret and enforce those laws without being penalized in world trade because some international decisionmaking body decides, in doing so, we benefited ourselves in terms of trade. I submit, why would you change these laws, if you were not in some way trying to benefit yourself, either by improving the environment or improving your competitiveness? Look at the application that Atlanta, GA, or Dallas, TX, or Houston, TX, submitted, asking for a waiver of the Clean Air Act. That application is full of the dire impacts that are going to be had if they stop building highways in Atlanta or Houston and if they have to shut down those refineries from Corpus Christi to Beaumont that produce 50 percent of the petrochemicals in the world in the Houston area. Their application for a waiver of the Clean Air Act is full of exactly the argument that, if we don't grant this waiver and give them more time to meet these requirements, we are going to destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and are going to adversely affect the ability of America to compete on the world market. If we expand this logic into the World Trade Organization, does anybody doubt that our competitors will take the application for a waiver of the Clean Air Act from Atlanta or Houston that is full of arguments, as it should be, about American competitiveness and say ``not only did they not enforce their law by granting this waiver, but if you read the application from Houston, TX, it is full of the logic that is going to hurt them competitively if they don't grant a waiver?'' Do we really want the World Trade Organization or an international dispute resolution putting our people out of work in Georgia or Montana or Texas because they believe when we changed our law, or when we changed the enforcement of it, that it benefited us in world trade? I do not think we signed on to do that. So that is where we are today. We have a trade agreement before us that was negotiated in the previous administration that has a very severe problem. If this agreement were with another country at another time, I do not believe it would be adopted. But today, facing a war with terrorism and given that this is with Jordan and given that the amount of trade involved is insignificant, from the United States point of view, I for one am willing to step aside and to support this bill. But I want to make it clear that any fast track or trade promotion authority legislation that would transfer the making of domestic law to the President, limiting--in this case eliminating--our power to amend or debate, or any future trade promotion agreement that would grant to a world decisionmaking authority the right to determine whether we have exercised our article I rights under the Constitution of the United States properly, where a world organization is making a determination as to whether our people are going to be put out of work because we amended labor and environmental laws in conformity with our rights under article I of the Constitution, that is something that I never, ever intend to support and never, ever within the ability to debate it and to fight it intend to see it accepted. We have to come to grips with these issues. We are putting them off today because this bill needs to pass. But these are matters that are going to have to be understood. They are going to have to be debated as we deal with fast-track authority, or as we now call it, trade promotion authority. To this point, everybody has tried to hide from these issues. But they are very real. They represent an assault on our separation of powers, they represent an assault on national sovereignty, and they do not belong in a fast-track or trade promotion agreement. With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. The right to sell in the private sector.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I think it is important we go back and outline how the base-closing commission works. In listening to this debate, we get the idea that by continuing a process of having a base- closing commission, that the commission simply takes on its own head and imposes the closing of bases without regard to the thinking of the President, without regard to the wishes of the Secretary of Defense. Let me remind my colleagues how the process works. How the process works is, you set up a structure and nothing happens until the President and the Secretary of Defense come forward and say, we believe for these reasons that these bases should be realigned, closed, restructured, merged, et cetera. Nothing happens until the President makes the proposal. Look, I understand base closings. We have closed bases in my State. I have a lot of bases. I am proud of every one of them. I love every one of them. And nothing is harder than watching communities that sacrificed and supported the military and helped win the cold war, and then through base closing and realignment we end up closing the base and imposing a very heavy burden on the community. I understand that. I identify with it. I have seen it in flesh and blood in my State. But the bottom line is we have 20 to 25 percent excessive capacity in military bases in America today. I was for the Base Closing Commission process before the 11th, but I am stronger for it now. The arguments for it today are stronger than they were then because we need these resources moved into areas where they can support the defense of the American people and into nontraditional areas. The first proposal the new Secretary of Defense made as part of his military realignment and restructuring was the renewal of the Base Closing Commission process that we had under a Democrat and a Republican President. If we come in now and simply say we forbid them from undertaking this process--we forbid the President and the Secretary of Defense from looking at our new situation and saying that based on where we were before the 11th, based on what happened on the 11th, based on the challenge we face today, we need to close or realign these bases and we want an orderly process to have it evaluated and to have Congress vote up or down, yes or no in response to that evaluation--if we come in and take the first proposal the Secretary of Defense has made and say no, we are not going to do it, it seems to me we are basically saying we do not want to restructure the military and we are going to look at our interests in our States and we are going to say those interests supersede the national security interests of the United States. There are two sides of every argument. I know there are good arguments on the other side, and they are going to be made persuasively. But let me just sum up. We have 20 to 25 percent excessive capacity in military bases, and I cannot foresee or imagine a circumstance under which that will not grow as a result of the conflict that started on the 11th. No base could be considered for base closing by the Commission unless it was recommended by the President and the Secretary of Defense. What we are doing here is taking away flexibility from them, to restructure resources to meet the current needs--not the needs of World War II, not the needs of the Korean conflict, but the needs of the military today. In the end, if we do not agree with the process, if after we go through their recommendation and the outside evaluation of people who are appointed to the Commission, confirmed by the Senate, evaluated independently--if we disagree with it, we can reject it. But I think it is very important that we not reject the only reform proposal that has come before the Congress since the new administration took office. I just think to accept this amendment today is basically to say to them: Forget about this reform because the first one you proposed, we say no to. I hope this amendment will be rejected. I am not sure that it will be, but I hope it will be. I would also like to say, while I have Senator Levin here in the Chamber, I thank him for his leadership on this issue. I would like to make a plea to him. He and I, out of the best of intentions, have for the last half dozen years engaged in a battle about the Prison Industries. I am not going to give a long speech on it today. I will have plenty of opportunities if we do not work something out to do that. But for the last half dozen years we have had a running debate. I believe people in prison ought to work. I think the evidence of decline in recidivism of people who are in Prison Industries is overwhelming. No less an authority than de Tocqueville, when he came to America in the 1830s to study American prisons and then decided to stay and study democracy, commented on the importance of prison labor and prison industry. Senator Levin and I have had a running debate about this issue. I want to preserve the prison industry system. He wants to--I would say ``kill it,'' but I will say ``dramatically change it,'' in this new spirit of bipartisanship. It is an important issue. It is one that deserves to be debated. There are two sides of the issue. Strong arguments can be made on both sides. But my plea to Senator Levin is, this is not the year or the time or the bill, it seems to me, on which to have this debate. I hope we can set aside this divisive issue on which the Senate has been roughly evenly divided. I think in the 6 years or so we have debated this issue, Prison Industries has survived by a handful of votes in each and every one of those years. I hope we can wait and debate this next year or the year after. We do not have to debate it this year. I think this is an impediment to seeing this important bill pass. I would just call on the better angels of his nature to let us set this issue aside with a guarantee that next year or the year after we will have a hot debate on it and we will each present our side of the argument and we can decide then on prison labor and prison industry in the Defense Department. But I think, with all we have going on, with all the major issues, this is not a good use of our time. So being here to support the chairman on this issue of base closing, I simply wanted to make my appeal that we put off this divisive issue of prison labor for another day. Next year we will do another Defense authorization bill. We can debate this divisive issue then. Hopefully this war will be well underway and we will be in the process of winning it overwhelmingly. If he would do that, this Member would greatly appreciate it. All the prisoners who are working would appreciate it. But I would appreciate it if we would eliminate this divisive issue and speed up the process of moving ahead with this bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Reserving the right to object, I was over here trying to do my reading homework. I am not sure I heard. Is the Senator asking that we limit amendments to the bill at this point?

Mr. GRAMM. Absolutely I do. Why shouldn't prisoners be paid to work?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I know there are a lot of other people who want to talk. One of the compromises that I would be satisfied with is to have competition in the Defense Department on procuring--competition with Prison Industries but let prison labor within the constraints of not selling locally, which could disrupt the local economy, and not glut the markets, let them produce and sell things in the private sector. If we could generate that, the problem is the practical impact of the policy that we have 1.2 million people in jail--almost all of them males in their prime, productive period--and the net result of the amendment is that the relatively few who are working won't be working. So they can't sell in the private sector. If you take away from them the right to sell to the largest Government customer, then there is no prison labor.

Mr. GRAMM. Further reserving the right to object, I am hoping something can be worked out on a nondefense issue which has found its way into the bill. I am doing everything I can to expedite that, to get that issue out of the way. I think we can save time by working that out, if we can. On that basis I have to object.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, today, in a bipartisan unanimous vote, we gave the President the money and the power to make war on those who have made war on us. We are down, it seems to me, to a stark and bitter choice: We can hunt down those who made war on us and make war on them where they live, or we can allow them to make war on us where we live. We can either change our lifestyle, limit our freedom, reduce our prosperity, or we can change the lifestyle of those who have made war on us. I am not indifferent to that choice. I subscribe to the thesis that when our enemies are on the run, they cannot have the resources and the communications to carry out the kind of terrorist war they carried out against the Pentagon and against the World Trade Center. We have to be aware and we have to accept up front that if we go too far in limiting our freedom or our prosperity in trying to fight this war, then we are ceding the very thing the war is about. So I believe very strongly this money and this vast commitment of authority and power is meant to go after our enemies and to pursue them to the end of the earth and to never let up in that process. I do not believe this is going to be an easy war to fight, and I believe it is going to be a costly war to fight. Our enemies have a hate for capitalism and for democracy that we cannot comprehend or understand. I believe until they are hunted down, captured, or killed we can never reestablish the safety we felt prior to last Tuesday. I also want to make it clear that I believe we have to choose sides in this conflict. Those countries that harbor or abet or tolerate the actions of terrorists on their soil are making war against the United States of America, and I believe that we have to hold them accountable. Finally, I want to thank our leaders. I want to thank Senator Byrd, for working to come up with a responsible appropriation. I think it is clear that under these circumstances, the Congress would literally be willing to pass any appropriations bill and spend any amount of money. As this conflict lengthens, as other priorities emerge, as we need more resources, as we ultimately will in this conflict, we will wish we had been responsible. I think we took an important and responsible first step today. I personally believe we should set up a joint bipartisan committee with the job of overseeing these expenditures, just as the Truman Commission oversaw the expenditures of World War II. The job of this committee would not be to determine how the money is spent but to simply see it is being spent as we appropriate it; to see we are not being gouged in terms of prices when there is no competitive bidding, as there generally is not when you are doing things on an emergency basis; to try and see that we are being good stewards of the taxpayers' money and getting the return on that money in comforting people who have been hurt, helping those who have lost loved ones, rebuilding things that have been destroyed, and prosecuting this war against our enemies. It should be a joint bipartisan committee or commission to work with the GAO to see the money is well spent, to see it is spent for the purposes we provided it, to see we are being charged reasonable prices, and to hold people accountable for things they do under emergency situations in terms of prices that are charged. We did that in World War II. Harry Truman did an excellent job, and the country benefitted from it. It should obviously not be something on the scale of what we did in World War II, but something similar to that would be helpful. I intend next week, when we come back, to talk about it. I hope my colleagues will look at that idea, look back at what Harry Truman did in his committee in terms of following the expenditures on the war and how well the money was being spent and holding people accountable. I am proud of the Senate today, and I think we have a right to be proud. I believe the American people are proud. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, yesterday, terrorists attacked the temple of American capitalism and the center of American democracy. With all of their terrible sophistication, they naively have seemed to believe, by destroying buildings and killing our people, that they can kill an idea. Capitalism and democracy are the most powerful ideas in the world. They are the crowning achievement of mankind on this Earth and they are not going to be destroyed by terrorists. Our task today is to find out with certainty who did these terrible deeds, and then it is our obligation to make war on them. I am not talking about criminal justice. We are not going to be reading anybody their rights. No one is covered by Miranda. Any country, any city, any region, and any person who makes common cause with those who make war against America is making war against America, and the wages of sin is death. I believe these people have a hate that we cannot comprehend or understand. We are only going to be safe when these people are captured or killed. We are hearing a lot of talk today about what we can do to be safer. I want to be safe. But let me make it clear: I don't want to change our way of life. I want to change their way of life. If we start infringing on our own freedom, if we start limiting our own freedom to move about our country and engage in our business and live our lives, then we are giving up what this war is about. We want to change their lives. We want to hunt them down in any dark corner, in any hiding place on this Earth. We want to be relentless, and we don't want to be constrained. I believe it is important that the people who did this terrible thing pay for it. I think if they pay for it, then we can make the world safer. Finally, let me say that any American who watched the bravery of ordinary citizens in New York and in Washington, who watched police officers and firemen risk their lives, had to be proud of what Americans did yesterday. I have never been more proud to be a citizen of America than I was yesterday--ordinary people doing extraordinary things under terrible circumstances. I know when we start getting the names of people, especially in New York and here at the Pentagon, who were killed, there are going to be many people on that list who we know. I knew Barbara Olson who was killed on the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon. She was a staffer here--a dedicated, brilliant woman. She called her husband, Ted Olson, our Solicitor General, and even facing death was talking about what she could do to try to resist. I am not surprised that she was brave because I knew her. My heart goes out to her and to everyone else who suffered. We cannot tolerate this act. We cannot simply go through the motions. We have to hunt these people down and kill them. They deserve it. They made war against America. I want people to stop talking about bringing them to justice. This is not about justice. This is about war. These people brought war to the mainland of America and killed thousands of our citizens. They have no rights. I think we have to hunt them down wherever they are and use whatever power we have in order to see that they don't do this again, and that no one else ever has the courage to do it again. Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. GRAMM. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I simply want to make a closing statement on this important bill. I begin by thanking the chairman of the committee, Senator Sarbanes, for his leadership, and Senator Johnson for the work, they have done on the bill. I especially want to thank Senator Enzi for his indispensable leadership on this bill; it is no understatement to say that we would not be here today were it not for Senator Enzi's leadership on this bill for the past two years. I have had the privilege of serving in the Senate now going into my 18th year, and I have never seen a Senator do the things Senator Enzi has done on this bill--in terms of being willing to meet the various agencies involved in export administration, sitting for endless hours and watching how the process works, and doing something we seldom do in this line of work: learn how the process works practically. We are often not willing to spend the time or get our hands dirty. The quality of the bill before us is due in very large part to Senator Enzi, and I want to publicly and personally thank him for his leadership. It sets a new standard for what a Senator ought to be in terms of hard work behind the scenes, getting the facts, understanding the mechanism. We like to deal with theory and leave the practical matters up to somebody else. That is not the way Senator Enzi does business. I thank our two colleagues, Senator Thompson and Senator Kyl. Maybe people listening to this debate wonder why I would thank them, given that we have some fundamental disagreements, but good law is made by basically trying to accommodate people who do not agree with you while maintaining your principles. I think, quite frankly, they have improved the bill. Counting the two changes that Senator Sarbanes, Senator Enzi and I agreed to this morning, we have made 61 changes in this bill in trying to build a consensus. I believe the product we have produced is a quality product, it will stand the test of time, and it will work. The points I want to make are: In listening to some of the critics, one may have gotten the idea that somehow this bill lessens our commitment to national security. We have an apparent conflict in America between our desire to produce and sell items that embody high technology, and we want to produce and sell them because the country that develops new technology creates new jobs and creates the best jobs. So, while we want to be the world leader in that technology, we have a conflicting goal in wanting to prevent would-be adversaries and dangerous people from getting technology that can be used to harm us or to harm our interests. That is what this bill is about. Today, 99.4 percent of the applications for a license are granted. When a process is saying ``yes'' 99.4 percent of the time, it is a nonsense process. We have about 10 times as many items on this controlled list as we should have. We need to build a higher fence around a smaller number of items, and when people knowingly violate the law and transfer this technology we ought to come down on them like a ton of bricks. Under this bill, the penalties can run into the tens of millions of dollars and people can end up going to prison for life. Those are pretty stiff sentences. We have put together an excellent bill. It represents a compromise between two competing national goals. It is legislation at its best. Many times we claim bipartisanship on bills when they really are not totally bipartisan. This bill is about as bipartisan as anything we have ever done on the Banking Committee since I have been in the Senate, and I think it represents good law. It is supported by the President. We have some 80 Members of the Senate who have voted basically to maintain the position. I am very proud of it, and I commend it to my colleagues. This is a good bill we can be proud of. I am ready to vote, and I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I have no question about the sincerity of Senator Thompson's amendment. He has worked with us on this bill, and against us to some extent. We have made 59 changes in the bill to accommodate Senator Thompson and people who share his concerns, but let me explain to my colleagues why this amendment is not good. We have established a system that for the first time is giving the security agencies a voice in this process. We have changed the system so one member of the panel, from any one agency, can vote no, and the process at that point is denied and it has to be appealed to a higher level. It is not like the old system, where the person from the Department of Defense could express concern but they could be overridden. Under the current system, you just have to have one person say no and the process either ends or it is bumped up to the next level. Finally, we give the President a new national security power that says no matter what the circumstances are, no matter whether a product is mass marketed or not, no matter whether a terrorist group or a terrorist nation or a would-be adversary could get the product from any other source, if the President believes it threatens national security, it is stopped. What this amendment would do would basically terminate the effectiveness to the system by saying that at any point anybody believes there is complexity in the analysis or there is a potential impact on national security or foreign policy interest, they could indefinitely delay. What we want is a decision. Remember, the reviewing officers can vote no, but we want them to vote yes or no. That is what the process is about. I urge my colleagues to defeat this amendment. I move to table the amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRAMM. Thank you, Mike.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I apologize to my colleagues for being late; I was busy on a matter important to my State. I wanted to come over today both to oppose the amendment that is before us and to speak on behalf of the bill itself. Let me do those in reverse order. First of all, our colleagues can be proud of the fact that the bill before us today is truly bipartisan, and I want to congratulate Senator Sarbanes for his leadership on this bill, both as chairman of the Banking Committee now and as ranking member when the bill was originally written. I also want to thank Senator Johnson and Senator Enzi for their leadership on this bill. This bill tries to deal with an inherent conflict that we face as a nation. On the one hand, we want to be the greatest technological giant in the world. We want to dominate the world in producing everything that embodies new technology because the country that controls that technology ultimately dominates the world economically. It has the highest wages, and the brightest future. So, we have not only a goal but a passion to see that when new tools are produced, when new technology is implemented in the marketplace, that it is American technology, implemented by Americans. We are the most technologically and scientifically friendly society in history, which is one of the reasons we are the greatest country in the history of the world. This bill is very much about that, but it is also about our other objective, which is to try to see, to the maximum extent we can, that new technology does not get into the hands of those who would use it to harm America or her interests and to engage in terrorist activities around the world. And that is the inherent conflict between these two goals. What this bill is trying to do is to find a way to deal with this inherent conflict. I personally believe, after having now spent some 2\1/2\ years working on this bill, that we have come to a good solution. We have come as close as you can come to reconciling these differences. Let me try to explain how. I know some of our colleagues are concerned that we have gone too far in trying to promote American sales of technologically advanced products. I believe, upon close scrutiny of this bill, objective observers will conclude that charge is not true. This bill tries to recognize something that we do not like to admit but that everybody has to admit is true: if a technology is generally available, if you can go to Radio Shack and buy something, if it is mass marketed all over the world--it may have defense implications; it may be something you would want to prevent a terrorist or terrorist state from getting--but if something is mass marketed, then would-be terrorists can go to Radio Shack and buy it. Would-be terrorist nations could get access to something that is mass marketed. One of the great strengths of the bill is that we introduce a new concept into American law--the concept of mass marketing. What we say is, if a technology is available on a mass market basis, if you can buy it all over the world, it is too late to protect it. So we propose building a higher wall around a smaller number of items. That is the logic of this bill. It is a very simple logic. The second component of the bill recognizes that it is very difficult to prove somebody knowingly sold or transferred technology that is protected. And since it is very difficult to prove that--very difficult to catch bad actors--we want the penalties to be extraordinarily stiff. Penalties in current law are so small as to be irrelevant to a modern corporate entity. Our penalties, which can run into the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, can, for repeat offenses and a pattern of behavior, result in imprisonment or life imprisonment or penalties that affect anybody's behavior. So we build a higher wall around a smaller number of items. We recognize it is certainly true that you can go into any Radio Shack and buy a computer that is more powerful than the most powerful computer that existed in the world when I was a college professor. I remember running multiple regressions which people now run on calculators. I had these punchcards that had all this data--more precious than life, almost. You would tote big boxes of these punchcards over to the computer center at 4:30 in the morning. They had an entire building that had an analog computer--an entire building. And it had so little storage capacity that my little multiple regression took the entire memory of the entire computer. And this whole building was devoted to running this computer. Now any college student taking college statistics can perform the same transaction on a modern calculator. Obviously modern technology can be put to defense use. But the point is, if our purpose is just to feel good, then we could do a lot of different things. But in writing this bill, we want to have a meaningful impact in the law. So for technologies that are readily available, that can be purchased anywhere, we decided to take them off the list of restricted export items. We have put together a system where the security agencies have the strongest voice they have ever had in the process. We have put together a procedure whereby an agency that has doubt can buck the decision up to a higher level, if they can get approval by a Senate-confirmed person in their department. We make it easier to say no. We give the President an all- encompassing power: if the President of the United States, having reviewed all the data, concludes that the sale of an item represents a national security threat, no matter whether it is mass marketed or anything else, then the President can intervene and say no. Now, the President himself has to do it. This cannot be delegated to somebody else, removing the President's responsibility to answer whether it is wise or promotes the public interest. That is the basic structure of this bill. This bill is strongly supported by the administration. It is supported by the Defense Department. It embodies the recommendations from the Cox Commission, whose key recommendation was that Congress quit trying to do things that only make it look as if it is concerned about national security, and instead focus on national security. We have done that. Some of our colleagues have concerns. I am hopeful, perhaps as early as in the morning, that I will get a chance to sit down with them to see whether, even at this late date, we might work something out that could give them greater confidence in what we are doing. But regardless, we have a good bill. It is a bill the country needs, and it is important. Let me add, my trusty staff has just passed me a note reminding me that we made no less than 59 changes in trying to deal with the concerns some of our colleagues raised in the last Congress. It is not as if the chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Sarbanes, and I have been deaf in terms of listening to their concerns. We have listened to them, and we have responded. We have made 59 changes in the bill and worked with the previous administration. And when the new administration came, we gave the bill to them, and they made suggested changes which we made. So, I think we have tried to work with everybody. But the point is, we are not through working. If we can improve the bill, we want to do it. Let me address a central point, though. I think it is important that people understand the logic of the bill. I then want to talk very briefly about the Thompson amendment. Ultimately, you have to ask yourself a question: Is America's security enhanced by our being the dominant economic power in the world that generates the great bulk of modern technology and that implements it first? Or could we promote our national security by freezing things as they are, by stopping the production and the export and the utilization of technology that might in the future have national security ramifications? Some people still seem to have this vision of the Cold War--that Ivan is at the gate, that technology is coming out of defense research establishments and into the American private sector, and then into the world private sector, and it is then absorbed by would-be adversaries. The plain truth is, that concept of the world is no longer valid. Most of the modern technology is coming from the private sector. In a sense, we are back to where we were in World War I, where one of the things we tried to do was take modern technology and implement it for military use. Then, as we developed what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex and redeveloped basically this university defense industry consortium, it was the engine for new technology. But today technology comes from the private sector, from international companies. If we don't let them implement the technology and put it to work and produce products here, they will produce them elsewhere. The net result is that we will have less control than we do now. Ultimately, the security of America is based on our ability to produce new technology, not on the technology that exists today. It is based on the technology we are going to generate in the future and that we are going to implement before anyone else. The only way we can keep that system intact is by allowing American industry to use modern technology. Amendment No. 1481

Mr. GRAMM. The Thompson amendment on its face looks desirable. But in reality, it assaults a system that we have put into place that forces a decision. Let's say I am Texas Instruments, and I want to export a technology. I have to file an application. Now, if I can prove that the technology is mass marketed that it is readily available or if we find that the technology is going to be mass marketed in the future, then all of those factors can come into play in making the export decision. But if at any point in the process an official believes there is a national security concern, then all he has to do is say no. The only thing that any one person on the whole panel representing all of these national security agencies--the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Commerce--has to do to stop the process is to utter the magic word ``no.'' And when they say no, the process is stopped, and the decision can be appealed to the next highest level--ultimately, to the President himself. But there is no lack of ability to stop a sensitive product from being exported. What I am concerned about--I have no question in my mind whatsoever of the good intent of this amendment--is that if we make it easy to not say ``no'' but just say ``let's wait,'' if we make it easy for someone to avoid making a decision, no politician and nobody governed by politicians will ever make a hard decision as long as there is any viable alternative. That is a chiseled-in-stone law of public behavior. And if we make it possible for people to delay because it is complex or because they say it has the potential of having national security interest, then what is going to happen? The whole process is going to get tied up. This bill, which tries to achieve a delicate balance between jobs and security, will end up being destroyed. I want my colleagues to know, in asking them to vote against this amendment, that any representative of any agency who is serving on the review panel has a right to stop the process by saying no. What they don't have the right to do is to say: Well, let's think about this for 6 months, or let's wait for a year while some foreign competitor is developing the same technology. They have to say yes or no, but they can say no. Secondly, I remind my colleagues that in part in response to concerns that were raised by Senator Thompson and others, we put a Presidential waiver in the bill where the President. Even if the review process says yes, even if under the law the export is exempt from the review, if the President finds that the product poses a national security concern, then the President has the right to intervene. Some people are going to say: Well, you made it so the President can't use it because how can the President do all these things? But we already know that the President doesn't do all these things. The practical implication of this waiver is that when a process is stopped that has otherwise been approved or that would otherwise be exempt, the decision is not going to be made by a deputy assistant secretary in the Commerce Department or an unknown person in the Defense Department. The person who will have to answer to the public for the decision is the President. What does that do? It guarantees that the agency representatives are not going to make this decision to circumvent the process for a light or transient reason. But if the President believes, based on the best advice he is given, that the product should not be exported, then the decision is made and it is not exported. I do believe we have put together a good system of checks and balances. The Thompson amendment makes it too easy to bail out of the system. An agency representative can always say no if he objects, but what he cannot do is cause delay after delay. That is what we are trying to deal with here, and I hope my colleagues will vote no on the Thompson amendment. Let me repeat, since I see that our distinguished colleague has come to the Chamber, I am hopeful we can get together, perhaps in the morning, with those who still have concerns about the bill to see if there is anything we can do to deal with those concerns. I know some suggestion has been made that we might have a blue ribbon panel to evaluate the entire process. I haven't talked to Chairman Sarbanes in any detail about that. But I think that is something we would be willing to look at as an addition to what we are doing. What we want to do is pass a good bill that I believe America needs. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me first say that I appreciate Senator Sarbanes' remarks. When your mama says something nice about you, people expect it. I do think Senator Sarbanes is correct, and I don't think I will do him any harm in Maryland by saying that he and I differ on a lot of subjects. In fact, it might well help him politically by saying that. But when we ended up running the Banking Committee--Senator Sarbanes as a Democrat and me as a Republican--everybody assumed that people who differed on as many issues as we differed on would never get anything done. I appreciate very much his kind comments, and I appreciate his pointing out the plain truth, which is that we have gotten a near record amount done. We have achieved that by recognizing that under our system you get things done by working with people instead of running over people. I have been chairman and Senator Sarbanes has been chairman, and I assume he will be chairman for the remainder of my time, but you never know. Maybe Senator Reid will have a change of heart and decide to come join us. Who knows? In any case, I am very proud of our record, and I am very proud to have Senator Sarbanes' friendship. Thank you.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, our dear colleague from Washington says opponents of this provision--such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer--are trying to cloud the issues. But supporters of her provision, such as the Deseret News, see it in crystal-clear terms. Let me begin by saying that our colleague from Washington asked: Who can be opposed to truck safety? How could anyone be in favor of unsafe trucks on American roads? The answer to that is very simple. No one is opposed to truck safety. No one wants unsafe trucks on our roads. I will begin by asking that amendment No. 1053, which is the substitute that Senator McCain and I submitted, and which is supported by the administration, be printed in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I want people to see this amendment because the amendment requires that every Mexican truck be inspected. It requires that the most stringent safety standards are met before Mexican trucks come into America, but it does it in a way that complies with NAFTA, a treaty obligation of the United States. It does it in a way that is common sense, to use the Senator's words, and that deals with legitimate safety concerns. Rather than going on all day, let me try to do the following thing, which I think represents about as fair a way of responding to the Senator from Washington as one can respond. She sets the standard that it be common sense and that it meet legitimate safety concerns. I wish to add to that that it not violate treaty obligations of the United States. I would like to take four provisions of the amendment of the Senator from Washington, and I would like to submit it to those tests. I have to say that I am quite pleased that the major newspapers in America have not been confused by this debate. In fact, the Chicago Tribune probably put it best in their lead editorial entitled ``Honk if you smell cheap politics.'' The truth is that Teamsters truckers don't want competition from their Mexican counterparts. I am pleased that people have not been confused. But in case anybody still has any confusion about what we are talking about, I want to take five provisions from the Murray amendment and submit them to her test of common sense, legitimate safety concerns, and do they violate NAFTA. The first has to do with a provision of the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999. This is a bill that was adopted by Congress, that has not been implemented fully by either the Clinton administration or the Bush administration, and it has to do with safety. These provisions apply to every truck operating on American highways. They apply to United States trucks, to Canadian trucks, and to Mexican trucks. The Senator from Washington says in her amendment that until this 1999 law is fully implemented, even though it applies to American trucks, American trucks can continue to operate; and even though this law applies to Canadian trucks, Canadian trucks can continue to operate; but until this law is fully implemented, until the regulations are written--and the administration says that these regulations cannot be written and this bill cannot be fully implemented for at least 18 months--until that is the case, no Mexican truck would be allowed to operate in interstate commerce in the United States. And that provision would be clearly in violation of NAFTA. I ask a question: If it is common sense that we don't want trucks to operate until this law is implemented, why don't we say all trucks? In fact, if we said all trucks, we probably would not be able to eat lunch this afternoon. But it would be common sense and it would not violate NAFTA. The first provision of the Senator's amendment, in essence, says that something that cannot happen for 18 months has to be done before we are going to comply with a treaty related to Mexican trucks. That is as arbitrary as saying that Mexican trucks can't come into the United States until the 29th of February falls on a Tuesday. It is totally arbitrary, and it is aimed at only one objective; that is, to treat Mexican trucks differently than American trucks, differently than Canadian trucks, and in the process of violating NAFTA. I think any objective person would say that requiring an action that has nothing to do with Mexican trucks to be undertaken by the U.S. Government before we are going to live up to a solemn treaty obligation of the United States has no element of common sense in it, nor does it have anything to do with legitimate safety. If it had anything to do with legitimate safety, we would restrict all trucks until this law was implemented. Finally, the final test: Does it violate NAFTA? Our requirement under NAFTA is very simple. It is one sentence. It is in the section on cross-border trade and services on page 1129. It says: Each party shall accord the service providers of another party treatment no less favorable than that it accords in like circumstances with its own service provider. This is the point: We are saying to American truckers that you can operate every day, even though this 1999 law is not implemented. We say a few Canadian trucks can operate today, even though this law is not implemented, but Mexican truckers can never operate, even though in NAFTA we promised they could. They can never operate until this law is fully implemented and the regulations are written. That is clearly not equal protection of the law; it is clearly not equal treatment; and it clearly violates NAFTA. The second provision of the Murray amendment that doesn't make common sense, that has nothing to do with legitimate safety, and that violates NAFTA has to do with truck leasing. Let me set it in context. Big trucking companies don't own trucks anymore. They lease them to each other. The last thing any trucking company can afford to do is have trucks that cost $250,000 sitting in their parking lot. (Mrs. BOXER assumed the chair.)