Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I thank the distinguished leader and the two distinguished sponsors of this particular amendment, the Senator from Minnesota and the Senator from Idaho. There is nothing better than a clear-cut, clean-cut little amendment, this particular provision. It simply says: Wait a minute, we don't want just an up-or- down vote on an overall patchwork of all kinds of trade measures, and all kinds of articles, and everything else of that kind. Somebody might not like what they got on prunes. Somebody might not like what they have on textiles and everything else. We are not disturbing whatever the negotiations are of our special Trade Representative, or the President. They tried to label it as either you are for the President or against the President. That is baloney. What it says is: Wait a minute, before you have to vote up or down to just bring a whole trade bill down, let's make certain the basic laws are right. Here is how it reads: Notwithstanding any other provision of law [it] . . . shall not apply to any provisions in an implementing bill being considered by the Senate that modifies or amends, or requires a modification of, or an amendment to, any law of the United States that provides safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices to United States businesses or workers, including-- imposition of countervailing and antidumping duties . . . national security import restrictions-- It goes down and lists those things that they are trying to safeguard from unfair trade practices. Even then, only on a point of order will the majority vote up or down. So you do not have to argue the entire trade measure that they have spent months and months, sometimes years and years on. You can just bring it to a majority vote. If I were the President or anybody else were the President, they would say please put that in there. We are not trying to superimpose this kind of authority over the Congress. Article I, section 8, of the Constitution says that the Congress has that responsibility. It is not the responsibility of the Special Trade Representative, not the Supreme Court, not the President--we have the responsibility. What I am trying to do is protect that responsibility. The administration should want me protecting the Constitution. What really is happening is that people do not understand the fix. Let me explain what I call the fix. If you go back to the early '90s to the enactment of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the trade treaty with Mexico, it was a very interesting thing. The New York Times published an article, after the vote was cast, about the 26 freebies that President Clinton did, to put on the fix in order to pass that particular measure. He gave two golf rounds, one in California, and another one somewhere in Arkansas for votes; he gave two C-17s to another Congressman; he gave a cultural center to Congressman Pickle, down in Texas, for a vote. At least those freebies, in order to fix the vote, got some people some jobs. Look the golf matches at least got somebody a job to cut the grass. Let's clear the air and understand what is going on right now. Under Mr. Bush's plan, we would not be allowed to debate and consider these trade measures--except in a limited way. The Senators from Minnesota and Idaho, said: Heavens above, let us have at least the national security laws, countervailing duties, and antidumping laws--where a point of order will give you an up-or-down vote and you do not have to vote up or down the entire trade measure. There is a very interesting article here--the unmitigated gall of the proponents of fast track. Let me read it: The Bush Administration indicated that the President might veto trade legislation if the Senate adds a provision that would allow Congress to amend foreign trade agreements the President negotiates. This week, the Senate is considering granting Bush fast track trade powers. Under fast track, Congress could approve or reject trade pacts but could not amend them. However, Senators Mark Dayton, Democrat of Minnesota, and Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, are pushing an amendment that would allow Congress to change trade pacts. They say Congress must have the power to make changes to protect U.S. workers. Commerce Department officials said that would defeat the purpose of fast track and they would recommend that Bush veto the legislation. In short, yes, the President does not have the authority under the Constitution. The Congress, under article I, section 8, has the authority and the responsibility. The President, and his little minion, Robert Zoellick, the Trade Representative--he runs around and smiles and grins in all of these places, and he can amend anything. He can amend the laws. But, oh, they bring and amend the laws with respect to our national security, with respect to countervailing duties and antidumping provisions. He can amend it. But the Congress can't even consider it on an up-or-down vote. Can you imagine the polls in such a situation as this. That Grassley amendment ought to be tabled immediately and we should not wait for 2:15. There isn't any question in my mind that this thing has gotten totally out of hand. The trade laws are not successes. The distinguished Senator from Iowa points out that everything has been coming up roses. But the fact is, we have been going out of business. Because of NAFTA we lost 53,900 textile jobs alone in the little State of South Carolina, 700,000 around the country--not just 20,000 steelworkers. So we lost all of those jobs. And we are going out of business. And the Congress of the United States tells them: Retrain, reeducate, high-tech, global competition. The President says you don't understand it. We understand it. We retrain. I told the story--I will repeat it right quickly--of the Oneida mill in Andrews that made the little T- shirts. At the time of the closing, they had 487 workers there. The average age was 47. The next morning they did it the President's way. They retrained the employees. They are re-skilled. They are now 487 skilled computer operators. Are you going to hire a 47-year-old computer operator or a 21-year- old computer operator? You are not taking on the retirement costs, you are not taking on the health costs of the 47-year-old. So it is a real problem. Here we have the responsibility, and this crowd will not even let us do our job. The arrogance of this K Street crowd who writes these trade measures is unbelievable. And the President of the United States went over on the House side, and by one vote he promised--what?--he would do a fundraiser. So he has been down to Greenville to show up at a fundraiser. It is money that talks, that controls here. You do not argue the trade measure, whether it is in the best interests of our country or not. This thing has gotten totally out of hand. And to come here and say whether this President likes it or that President likes it, well, this Senator does not like it at all. We have many other measures, too. I noticed that Nick Calio, and his minion at the White House, said we have to get on, we can get rid of this bill this week and we can get it to conference, and everything else like that. We have barely been able to get on this particular amendment to discuss it. And then they say, well, we will put in a little maneuver here. And we will fix that vote. And we will not even have it, even when they have changed it from a 60-vote point of order down to just a majority vote up or down. They will not even let you have a majority up-or-down vote on the security of the United States under the responsibilities of the Senate. They say that past Presidents like it. Past Presidents don't go back down to Arkansas--they move to New York. They don't sell this trade bill as being good for farmers in Arkansas, I can tell you that. They won't run for election down there. And they won't do it in my State of South Carolina, either. It is a hearty development to find the distinguished Senator from Idaho, and the Senator from North Dakota--they know that agricultural business extremely well. They are now joining in because they are losing all the agriculture. The 3\1/2\ million farmers that we have in America cannot outproduce 700 million farmers in China. That is why we have a deficit in the balance of trade with respect to corn. They tell me that now China is shipping to Japan and Korea some of their wheat so they can continue to appear as if they are taking our wheat. But we are going out of business there. And we will not have the wonderful export of America's most productive production; namely, America's agriculture. So I hope we will slow down, stop, look, and listen, and understand that all we are trying to do is our job. And our job is to regulate foreign commerce. Please let us have a vote up or down. Do not come in and say, you cannot even have an up-or-down vote on the antidumping substantive law, that you can repeal it. Because once they repeal it in Doha, or any other foreign land, we're in trouble. When the trade reps meet to discuss agreements they don't go to places like Seattle any more, where people can go to and demonstrate and tell about our trade experiences here in the United States. No, they pick a place that no one ever heard of. You can't find it on the map. The next meeting will be down in the Antarctic. I have been down there. It is hard to get there. That is where they will have the next trade negotiation, where nobody can be heard. And they will get the fix, and then they will come back and do exactly what is happening on this bill. There is a fix. In this particular case it is not golf games and not C-17s, it is not cultural centers like it was on NAFTA, but it is welfare. It does not employ anybody. It says: Well, we give you a little welfare to keep your mouth shut, so you can go back home and run for reelection. It is not about trade, not about jobs. We have the job of creating jobs. They are exporting them faster than we can possibly manage it. And now they are not only exporting their manufacturing, they are exporting the executive office to Bermuda. So here, in a time of war, when you should hear the word ``sacrifice,'' they put the President on TV, who says: Don't worry. Take a trip. Go to Disney World. Take your family. And what we ought to do is cut some more taxes to run the debt up. You are going to hear about that because by this time next month we will be in desperate circumstances. We have to increase the debt limit, but they will not say they will increase the debt limit. They will try to say it is the war, as to why we need to borrow money. Oh, no, it is not the war. It is the trillions of dollars they have lost. And now they want to lose another $4 trillion. Larry Lindsey--he doesn't like me referring to him--but he is the one who opposed what we had going with President Clinton and Secretary Summers to stop all of these offshore locations from avoiding taxes. They even had a bill, reported out of the committee over on the House side, that did that. You would think, by gosh, we would be raising taxes to pay for the war, certainly not escaping our civic duty in a time of war. But that is the hands that we are dealt. The wonderful Business Roundtable, the Conference Board, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--oh, they will all tell you what is good for the country. What they are saying is wrecking the economy. They don't want to pay for anything. All they want to do is just help everybody buy the different elections. I see my time is up. I hope that at 2:15, when they move to table, Madam President, that the people will sober up and come to the floor and give us a chance on that vote to table the Grassley amendment so we can do our job. We don't say one way or the other; we just say, give us an up-or-down vote to consider the security, consider the antidumping provisions, as the Dayton-Craig amendment calls for. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, last November when our former colleague Harrison Williams passed away, I don't believe his legislative accomplishments were recognized by this body, and I wanted to remember my friend, the enormously popular Senator from New Jersey. I had the privilege to serve with him for 15 of his 23 years, and he achieved more than most people will ever realize because he worked the old-fashioned way: making headway, not headlines. He sponsored progressive legislation that with 30 or 40 years hindsight, we now see has made an incredible difference in millions of people's lives. The good mass transit systems we have in our Nation today we have because Pete was mass transit's champion. Americans have the best safety and environmental working conditions in the world because he created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. We have pension protections because of him. We have greater accessibility for the handicapped because of him. Anything related to worker's rights, or working conditions, he had his hand in. Like all of us he was not perfect, and he paid a price. But this Senator will remember my friend for his legislative accomplishments, and believes the words he said himself when he left this Chamber: That time, history and Almighty God would vindicate him for the principles for which he fought. My wife, Peatsy, and I know how much his wife, Jeanette, and his four children, miss him, and we hope the best for them.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank Senator Inouye for summing up a complicated issue in simple and clear language. When you and I discussed this issue, I was immediately concerned. There appears to be a simple solution for labeling of wild-caught fish: allow fish caught by a U.S. flag vessel to be labeled with the U.S. as the country of origin. This would have the added benefit of bringing the point of sale label into conformity with the approach taken by U.S. customs regulations. Moreover, the extreme perishability of some ocean products require processing at sea. For example, squid must be processed where ever it is caught or it will spoil--thus, if caught by a U.S. flag vessel on the high seas, it would have to be processed on the high seas according to U.S. requirements. I had shared Senator Inouye's hope that this technical correction might be included in the farm bill, and I worked with him, and Senators Daschle and Harkin toward that end. Although time did not permit the inclusion of the provision, I believe that Senator Harkin may have a few words to offer.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, we have had very little opportunity to really discuss trade. This bill was called up on a weekend, without debate. By Monday evening it was already moved for consent, so there was no debate whatsoever given to actually calling up the fast-track measure for consideration, to discuss it. We need a thorough discussion of exactly what is occurring in the globalization in world trade. I am sorry I do not have a greater audience, but I will speak for the purposes of at least getting it in the Record. Tomorrow we will be on the farm bill. There is a general slowdown with respect to the Dorgan amendment. We have only had one amendment up. I have a very important amendment relative to trade adjustment assistance. What we are providing, as I understand it, in the Daschle amendment as a substitute for the fast-track measure itself, is trade adjustment assistance for the legacy cause, for those in steel who had retirement, and when the plants closed, of course, they went broke and could not provide for that retirement. I am a strong supporter of that situation, so long as we can consider the post-NAFTA textile employees--we call them associates now, down south. Those associates who lost their jobs over the 8-year period since NAFTA was enacted, have not been able to find new ones. I will have a very important amendment. I have 53,900 who have made claims for unemployment. One of the distinguished leaders on the floor earlier today said he could not believe that figure. That figure comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for those associates who have made claims for unemployment, having lost their jobs. I think it is just as important, or more important, since they have not been able to find any work, that they be taken care of, that they have available the measure called COBRA, so they can get their health care while they are looking. We are in desperate circumstances. Everyone knows of the wonderful success we have, and I share in it, with respect to the German industries. When I was governor of South Carolina, I visited Germany in 1960, to try to attract corporations to open plants in my state. In the 42 years since, I thought 117 companies had opened plants. But last week when I said that, the German Ambassador heard me and has updated the figure for me. It is now 125 German industries. So we are rejoicing in the success of German investment in South Carolina, particularly everyone coming here for the BMW plant. But the unemployment rate for the BMW plant in Spartanburg, where it is located, was 3.2-percent last year. It is now 6.1-percent. The overall unemployment of the State itself is 6 percent. We are having a very difficult time replacing those jobs. At least we ought to be able to get trade adjustment assistance for those unemployed associates. I place with specific emphasis an article in the May 13 issue of Business Week, entitled ``Where The Recovery Won't Reach.'' Madam President, I think it is important that I cover this now while others are not seeking recognition. Unlike bouncebacks of the past, many jobs recently lost at American factories may be gone for good. The recession of 2001 may have been exceptionally mild for the economy as a whole but it devastated U.S. manufacturing. The number of manufacturing jobs fell from 18.5 million in the middle of 2000 to 16.9 million today--a decline almost as steep as during the harsh downturn of 1981-82. Let me divert for a moment to say that years ago Sony's Akio Morita told me that a country that loses manufacturing capacity will cease to be a world power. A generation ago, we had 26 percent of the workforce in manufacturing. Today, it is less than 12 percent. We are hardly producing anything. When the debate resumes, I will have the figures with respect to what we are not able to produce. The majority of what we consume in the United States in manufacturing, of course, is important. Back to the article itself: In the past, manufacturing employment typically rebounded after a recession ended. After the 1981-82 downturn, manufacturing got back about two-thirds of the jobs it had lost. In the 1990s, growth in U.S. high-tech manufacturing helped offset losses in industries such as steel and apparel. By 1998, manufacturing employment had risen to only 11% below its all-time high. This time, however, the bounceback may not be so strong and the bulk of the manufacturing job losses may be permanent. The sharp decline in U.S. corporate profits, combined with the burden of a strong dollar, is forcing companies to take a fresh look at how they can cut costs. And in an increasingly global economy, they're deciding it's cheaper to use foreign factories than domestic ones. The result: As U.S. demand rebounds, imports are rising far faster than domestic production. First-quarter imports of goods rose at a 10% annual rate, adjusted for inflation. South Korean factories are ramping up production, while electronics makers in Taiwan are restarting idle machines to turn out chips, phones, and flat-panel displays. Meanwhile, manufacturing output in the U.S. rose at a mere 3% annual rate in the first quarter. What's worse, factory employment shrank at a 6% annual rate, with no sign of a bottom. The failure to generate manufacturing jobs at home may already be muting the recovery. Let me divert again to emphasize that it is not just the bankers in Japan. I am telling you--manufacturing, research, and high-tech both from the United States and Japan are all going to China. We are going out of business here. We are hollering ``free trade, free trade'' as if we are doing something to help the country. Incidentally, the assistant majority leader, the Senator from Nevada, just pointed out that there could be a closedown by our Republican colleagues later this week on the proceedings here in the Senate for their desire to confirm some 11 judges. Here they are talking about an emergency to close down proceedings and to close down the Senate for judges. We are looking for jobs, not judges. Let me go back to the article. The worsening of the trade deficit subtracted 1.2 percentage points from economic growth in the first quarter, the Commerce Dept. says. And the economic drag appears likely to continue, as manufacturers aggressively cut jobs even as demand picks up. The employment index of the Institute for Supply Management survey for April was 46.7, signaling further contraction of the factory workforce. In recent days, DuPont announced plans to cut about 1,400 U.S. textile manufacturing jobs, while Kraft Foods Inc. said it would close a Chicago plant that makes Shake 'N Bake coating mix. Maytag Corp. has transferred four assembly operations to a maquiladora in Reynosa, Mexico, and plans to transfer 12 others by August. In April, San Francisco's Levi Strauss & Co., which once boasted of its American-made clothing, said it would close six U.S. factories and lay off 3,300 workers. That will leave it with just two U.S. factories. Most of its clothing comes from contractors in Latin America and Asia. Intense competition makes low-cost regions hard to resist. In electronics manufacturing, for instance, the labor cost for assembling printed-circuit boards--the guts of electronics gear--is about $7 to $8 an hour in the U.S., vs. about 50 cents an hour in China, estimates Jeffrey A. Bloch, vice-president for electronics manufacturing services at iSuppli Inc., a supply-chain consulting firm in El Segundo, Calif. The cost differential wasn't so compelling during the tech boom of the late 1990s when companies like Cisco Systems Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc. were willing to pay extra for the convenience of having production in the U.S., close to their engineers and customers. ``Flexibility was more important to them than cost,'' says Bloch. With the tech boom over, he says, ``those industries have now decided to go to the lower-cost regions.'' Moreover, so much of electronics manufacturing has moved to Asia already that it's cheaper and easier to build gear there than to ship all the little pieces across the Pacific for assembly in the U.S., says Jim Sacherman, chief marketing officer for Flextronics International Ltd., the Singapore- based contract manufacturer. Flextronics says it will soon have 75% to 80% of its production in low-wage regions, vs. half in 2000. Once gone, production rarely shifts back to high-cost regions. Says Sacherman: ``It's pretty hard under any market conditions to say, `For these reasons, I'm going to pay more.' '' Adding to their attractiveness countries such as China, Mexico, Malaysia, and South Korea are moving up the manufacturing learning curve, boosting their productivity faster than in the U.S. In the second half of the 1990s, U.S. manufacturing productivity rose at a solid 4.6% rate--but manufacturing productivity in South Korea, for example, improved nearly 12% a year. While most manufacturing jobs are in production, the category also includes engineers, researchers, managers, and support staff of manufacturing companies. Some white-collar Americans are even moving to where the jobs are. To lure Westerners and U.S.-based Chinese to a new billion-dollar chip fab in Shanghai, China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. is building an elementary and middle school for their children. It's not just in technology that jobs are shifting abroad. In North and South Carolina, the heart of the South's once- huge textile and apparel industry, many companies that had been struggling to survive have finally capitulated. Worse for them than the recession was the dollar's strength, which triggered a flood of cheap imports. In the past two years, the dollar is up sharply against the currencies of apparel exporters such as Indonesia and South Korea. Mainly because of the dollar's impact on import prices, retail apparel prices have fallen 3% over the past year. ``The strong dollar is just wiping manufacturing out,'' says Cass Johnson, an associate vice-president at the American Textile Manufacturers Institute. Makers of machinery and steel are also suffering from the dollar's rise. The job losses aren't even across industries. Pharmaceuticals employment has increased 5% from a year ago despite the recession. Auto industry employment is benefiting from the construction of assembly plants in the U.S. by the likes of Toyota, Honda, and Mercedes. Netting out Big Three plant closings, productivity gains, and expansions by Japanese, Korean, and German auto makers, ``auto employment will hold even'' through 2010, predicts Sean McAlinden, economics director at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. For employers, closing U.S. factories makes all the sense in the world. For employees, it can be a terrible shock. Take General Electric Co., a leading advocate of globalizing production. It uses Mexican factories to make everything from medical diagnostic gear to appliances. ``They really don't give any real consideration to the impact of their decisions on workers,'' says Edward Fire, a vice-president of the Communications Workers of America. GE says it has generous retraining and separation programs and continues to have a vibrant U.S. production base. The ability of U.S. manufacturing to generate jobs at home was one of the more pleasant surprises of the 1990s. The inability to keep them here may be one of the unpleasant surprises of this decade. Now, there it is. I had been pleading last week with respect to the outflow of manufacturing. I quoted the General Electric policy, which says they would not consider any supplier to GE unless the supplier moved its facilities into Mexico. Here is the best of the best in American industry, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Conference Board, and the Business Roundtable, all arrayed to move and eliminate jobs from the United States of America. It is our duty, our responsibility, to maintain jobs, to maintain the economic strength and security of the United States. My friend, Robert Kennedy, who came to public acclaim for his book ``The Enemy Within,'' sat at this desk, talking about labor. Today, I could write that same book--``The Enemy Within''--and it would be about management. That is our competition. We are like that fifth column in the civil war in Spain. We are having the particular trade policy of the United States made downtown on K Street. They bring it to the White House; get general approval for it; move to fix a vote on the House side; and barely get it--the White House got it by one vote, by promising to have a fundraiser. And President Bush went to the textile Piedmont to fulfill his commitment for that one vote. So they now have passed fast track. Over on this side, having gotten through, of course, the Finance Committee, they now have the 60 votes to go ahead and enact fast track without any provisions whatsoever. As a result, as you can see this afternoon, where we have it now up for debate, there is no one here to listen, for the simple reason: everybody knows the score. The vote is fixed. Why listen to the debate? Let's get it over with. We have a lot of work to do. That is not how we should fulfill our responsibility under article I, section 8 of the Constitution. It is not the President, not the Supreme Court, but the Congress that shall regulate foreign commerce. So much for manufacturing it is all high-tech, high-tech. I have had to listen to that nonsense for the last 10 years. Retraining, retraining. I have retraining coming out of my ears. I can retrain for any kind of job anywhere at any time. Then there is globalization. I don't want to sound like Al Gore, that I invented globalization, but a moment ago I said 40 years ago I went on trade missions to Europe, as well as to Latin America. Now we have 125 German plants in South Carolina. We have Michelin there, with four facilities and its North American headquarters. We have Bowater's North American headquarters in Greenville, SC. Oh, yes, we have been working on trade. So don't start and act as if there is a sudden change and you old fogies have to understand globalization. And you have to understand and know about retraining and, more particularly, high-tech, high-tech. Bunk. Listen to this: the New York Times, dated April 21: ``Japan Braces for a `Designed in China' World.'' Let me repeat that: ``Japan Braces for a `Designed in China' World''--because that is the country that out manufactures us. Japan has about 126 million people. We have 280 million people. We had a huge running start. Japan was decimated at the end of World War II. We had the only industry. Now, in a 55-year period, they are out manufacturing and out producing the United States of America. Here is what they are doing. This article was written by James Brooke from Tokyo for the New York Times. I quote: In recent decades, Japanese companies invested to make China the ``factory to the world.'' In recent months, Japan's blue-chip manufacturers announced investments to make China the ``design laboratory to the world.'' In a cascade of announcements this spring, blue-chip Japanese manufacturing companies said they were planning research and development units in China. Spurring the moves are the low wages of Chinese engineers, a growing Chinese market for computer chips and the hope that China's entry into the World Trade Organization will bring protection for patents. The crumbling of an informal wall that long kept assembly in China and research here may spell the end of Japan's last great competitive advantage over its low-wage neighbor. And it is yet another step in China's rise, one that means both new opportunities and wrenching change for Japan, which has lately been coasting on wealth built up in earlier, high- growth decades. Today's young Japanese have grown up in affluence, taking for granted high wages and their nation's status as the world's second-largest economy. But older Japanese returning from visiting Chinese factories and laboratories report that the hard-working, self-sacrificing Chinese workers remind them of the Japanese workers of the 1960's. As more and more Japanese manufacturing migrates to China, the research and development activity is gradually following, to be close to production. ``China is quickly becoming a country of low wage and high tech,'' Yotaro Kobayashi, chairman of Fuji Xerox, warned recently, echoing the spreading insecurities here. ``They are going to prove to be extremely competitive with Japanese companies.'' China, with an economy only one-quarter the size of Japan's, has a long way to go. But the thousands of computer engineers graduating annually from Chinese universities are enough to keep wages at one-third the level in Japan, a country facing a shortage of engineers. With the number of 18-year-olds decreasing, colleges across Japan are closing because of a shortage of students. Many of the biggest recent investments involve some of Japan's biggest technology names. This month, the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company opened a research and development laboratory in Suzhou, China, for household appliances. By 2005, this lab and a Matsushita cellphone lab that open in Beijing last year will employ 1,750 Chinese engineers. Last month, the Nomura Research Institute, a leading Japanese systems integrator, began outsourcing software projects to China in an effort that will employ 1,000 Chinese software engineers by 2005. The Toshiba Corporation is planning a tenfold increase in the number of engineers at its new chip development center in Shanghai, to 1,000 by 2004. ``We intend to enlarge the R&D function in China,'' Yukio Shohtoku, managing director of Matsushita Electric, said the day after the lab opened. The complex, in Jiangsu province, 200 miles northwest of Shanghai, will concentrate on developing air-conditioners, lights, refrigerators and washing machines. His company, he added, does ``as much software development outside Japan as possible'' because it does not have enough engineers and the cost of engineering is high in Japan. Japanese companies are not pioneers in China. By the end of 2000, 29 multinationals, including Lucent Technologies, Microsoft, and I.B.M. of the United States, Alcatel of France and Nokia of Finland, had opened research and development units in China. Typical of Japan's investment frenzy this spring, Yomiuri, a daily newspaper in Tokyo, recently ran a banner headline, ``Toshiba Plan I.T. Plant in China,'' over an article that cited company sources as saying the electronics concern planned to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a huge information technology production and research complex outside Shanghai. A Toshiba spokesman, Hiroyuki Izuo, immediately denied the report. But given the wealth of detail and Japan's tradition of news leaks, many business analysts here believe that Toshiba is preparing a major project. Japan Inc.'s new scramble to show individual competitiveness looks a lot like Japan's old herd instinct. Hitachi, Sony, Pioneer, Fujitsu and NEC are just some of the other blue-chip companies that have announced plans recently for research and development units in China. Two weeks after the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation opened an elevator research unit in Shanghai in February, a major rival, the Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems Corporation, opened a research unit, also in Shanghai. And two weeks after plans were announced for the Honda Motorcycle R&D China Company in January, the Yamaha Motor Company announced that it would open a research and development unit in or near Shanghai in 2003. About 80 percent of the 11 million motorcycles made in China last year were copycats of Japanese models, according to the Japan Automobile Manufactures Association. With China now in the World Trade Organization, Japanese manufactures hope that it will crack down on sales of ``Yamehas'' and ``Suzakis.'' Much of the new Japanese push into China is in semiconductor design and production, long an area of Japanese strength. The heavy investment this year comes after the worst year by far for global chip market, but a year in which chip demand in China grew about 30 percent. It is expected to grow another 30 percent there this year. Fueling this chip demand, China is now the world's largest market for cellphones, and by 2006 is expected to surpass Japan as the No. 2 market for PC's, after the United States. In 30 years. China's population is expected to grow to 13 times that of Japan, from 10 times greater today. Chinese chip demand is expected to quadruple by 2010, to a $48 billion market, Richard R. Chang, president of the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, said in a speech here. His company, 38 percent owned by Royal Philips Electronics, the Dutch giant, is part of a series of Chinese chip makers whose executives have visited here in recent weeks to drum up investment. A surge is also expected in the number of high-tech workers. At an information technology conference here last month, Liu Jiren, chairman of the Neusoft Group, China's largest software company, told Japanese investors that in five years Chinese universities ``will produce 5 to 10 times as many engineers as now.'' Over all, Japan will be short 300,000 high-technology workers within three years, a Japanese government study warned recently. Despite this shortage, hundreds of Japanese managers and engineers, many forced into early retirement, now work in China, usually for lower pay. The flow of investment, both human and financial, is changing the nature of China's export to Japan. Ever since Japan and China established diplomatic ties in 1972, the two largest Asian economies were seen as complementary. ``There is a clear division of labor between the two countries, with China specializing in labor-intensive products and processes, while Japan concentrates in high-tech products,'' C.H. Kwan, a senior fellow at the Japanese government's Research Institute of Economy Trade and Industry, wrote in a report six months ago. ``China's exports look like Japan's imports and vice versa.'' In this relationship, China has sold goods like towels, coal and spring onions to Japan, and Japan has sold laptops, digital cameras and DVD players to China. Now China produces and exports all these goods. The high-technology portion of China's exports has more than tripled, to 18.5 percent last year form 5 percent in 1985. But the goods produced by Japanese companies have largely been designed in Japan. The Japanese have long prided themselves on quality production, relegating Chinese-made goods to discount shops, Now, Japanese manufacturers and consumers say they do not see much qualitative difference between Made in Japan and made in China. In a recent survey of 81 Japanese companies operating in China, 62 percent of managers said they saw no difference in the quality of products made in Japan from those made in China. Fifteen percent said the Chinese products were of better quality, according to the poll, which was commissioned by The Nikkei Business Daily, Japan's leading business newspaper, and Japan Management Association Consultants, a private industry group. These tectonic shifts are rattling the increasingly insecure Japanese. In the 1990's China's economy grew seven times as fast as Japan's. Such statistics help populist politicians fan the flames as they play on Japanese fears of this emerging--and ambitious--economic giant next door. Last year, Japan reduced its foreign aid to China by 25 percent, to $1.2 billion, the biggest cut since aid started in 1979. The cut was not big enough for Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo's populist governor, who warned voters last month that Japan ``has been providing H-bomb-producing China with hundreds of billions of yen every year from your tax money.'' According to the Kyodo News agency, Ichiro Ozawa, a conservative opposition leader, warned recently that if China `` gets too inflated, Japanese people will get hysterical.'' ``It would be so easy for us to produce nuclear warheads,'' he continue. But with Japan rivaling the United States as China's biggest economic partner, such hostile talk has prompted a series of ``China is not a threat'' statements. The growth of the Chinese economy will not be a threat for Japan,'' Li Peng, chairman of China's Parliament, told Japanese investors in Japan this month in one such sally. ``The size of the Chinese economy is still small compared with that of Japan.'' Full economic cooperation with China will continue, Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, vowed this month in a speech at an Asian economic conference in China. ``Some see the economic development of China as a threat,'' Mr. Koizumi said. ``I do not. I believe that its dynamic economic development presents challenges as well as opportunities for Japan. I see the advancement of Japan-China economic relations not as a hollowing out of Japanese industry but as an opportunity to nurture new industries in Japan and to develop their activities in the Chinese market,'' added the prime minister, an advocate of free-market changes at home. In an exercise in raising morale, Mr. Koizumi recently visited two Japanese high-technology companies in Tokyo and said: ``I feel Japan's potential is high. Japanese people should be more confident.'' Many business people in Japan think that China's growth will provide jobs for the Japanese in new ways. For example, a consortium of companies in the Japan Railway group is talking with China about selling technology and materials to build a Japanese-style ``shinkansen'' bullet-train system in China. We are having a hard time getting Amtrak going, and here they are building bullet train systems in China. We cannot get a national passenger defense rail system in this country because we are worried about 11 judges. We are not getting with the program. Terrorism war? Trade war, Madam President. It has been going on. We have been losing our shirts. We have been losing the war, but that is what it is. It is a war without guns and without bombs and planes and tanks. But it is an economic struggle in competition. There is nothing free about this war; I can tell you that right now. But looking 25 years ahead, when China's economy is expected to surpass Japan's, some Japanese say they will have to adjust to playing a secondary role to their huge neighbor. ``Over the last 4,000 years of history, Japan has been a peripheral country to China, with the exception of this one last century,'' said Kenichi Ohmae, author of ``China Impact,'' published in Japan this month. ``In the future, Japan will be to China what Canada is to the United States, what Austria is to Germany, what Ireland is to Britain.'' Despite the move of higher and higher technology manufacturing and research to China, for the near term at least Japan will retain an edge in animation, video games and the most advanced consumer electronics, Mr. Ohmae predicted. The Nintendo Company, for instance, produces 70 percent of its GameBoy Advance units in China and plans to start producing GameCube video-game consoles there this summer. But like most Japanese multinationals, Nintendo keeps most of its research and design in Japan. Not content to write about China's high-technology boom, Mr. Ohmae, former chairman in Japan of McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, is investing in back-room data processing and telephone information call centers in Dalien, China. Both operations take advantage of the linguistic links of China and Japan and new fiber optic telephone and high- speed data connections. ``Half a million Japanese-speaking Chinese live in northeastern China.'' Mr. Ohmae said, referring to an area with long investment ties to Japan. ``The costs are one-tenth that of Japan. ``There is no border,'' he added, spinning a future of ever closer economic integration. ``Part of the business goes to China. Part remains in Japan. I don't see a clear, industry- by-separation of China and Japan.'' Madam President, these are the things the Senate ought to be paying attention to. We need to pay our bills, rebuild the economy, cut out this Enron accounting of on-budget/off-budget, unified budget, and all the fancy words. Enron didn't start them. These politicians started it long before Ken Lay left Missouri to go down to Texas and start his charade. The truth is we in the U.S. Government have been playing with Enron accounting, and there is more coming up. We have a budget deficit. They don't call it a budget deficit. The Republicans have their budget; now let the President submit it. Let's call it up and see what they are going to do with it. But I will be suggesting--among other things--a freeze. Just take this year's budget for next year. We just passed the main defense bills--Labor, Health and Human Resources--just before Christmas. So here we are less than five months later. We would not hurt anybody with a freeze. Let's just take that hold-the-line approach, except in national defense and homeland security. We can put those aside. Let's debate the budget the President has submitted and consider what he asked for. He submitted his defense budget. Let's consider that and debate it and vote it. But let's not spend the whole darn time talking about how we are saving money. We can just take this year's for next year. Madam President, we would save almost $155 billion over five years. We would save $155 billion, rather than spend an extra $155 billion. Senator Thurmond and I are going to get by. But the Presiding Officer is going to have to pick up our bill. All the other young leaders we have in the U.S. Congress--we are just adding to the national debt. Another item to come up is the national debt. I don't mind if those who cut the revenues to increase the debt, rather than pay down the debt-- if they will give us a modicum of votes over there. They play a political game. I voted for the increase of the debt, but I want to see the debt come down. Don't act as if we don't know how it happened. We know exactly how it happened. It has the economy and the market's in Washington and New York just frozen in their tracks because of our leadership. The President, is playing T-ball, or running out to some Federal facility or some school patting the little children on the head, and then patting the pocketbooks at night with a fundraiser. We cannot get him in the Oval Office and find out what's going on. He wants a $4 trillion additional loss of revenue, which increases the debt some $4 trillion. So they will come up here and say, well, we have to increase the debt. It is an emergency situation. They start moving things around with Enron accounting. By June 28, they have to pay the interest costs to the Social Security trust fund--you see, they keep spending the Social Security money by issuing these bills, and they will have to pay it back and they won't have the money. So we will have to do something by June 28, and let's see the disposition of these tax cutters. We gave 8 years of the finest economy in the history of these United States of America under President Clinton by increasing taxes. Yes, we cut spending. We also increased the taxes. This Senator and others, without a single Republican vote, increased taxes on Social Security, and we voted to increase taxes on gasoline. We took the hard stand. Yes, we lost the Senate in 1994. It cost us politically, but we did it, and we stuck to our guns. Now they come with their leadership: Let's cut taxes; let's buy the vote; tell them the Government is too big; and it is the people's money, they know how to spend it better than we do. What kind of childish talk is that? America knows the city hall and the State houses back home are going to have to pay their bills. They have increased taxes in certain States, almost a dozen of them, and they are having to cut programs right across the board. They are not saying: Let's cut the revenues another $4 trillion. Come on. These are the issues we ought to be talking about, and let's get with it for a trade policy. We need a value-added tax to pay that bill and to equalize production and international trade. Every industrialized country in the world has a VAT save the United States of America. Now we need one. We can use it to pay for the war, but we have our leadership, our President, saying that we are not going to pay for the war. Since we have a war, we are going to run deficits, and, incidentally the war is never going to end. What kind of leadership is that? I never heard of such a thing. No wonder this country is in trouble. Everybody is amused. Politics is a spectator sport. The Government in Washington is just the weekend shows. As long as we do not get anything done--when in doubt do nothing and stay in doubt all the time, but keep spending, keep running up the debt and talking to everybody about how we are saving Social Security. We are not saving Social Security. We are spending it. We at least ought to pay for this war on terrorism. We paid for every war we have ever had. More than anything, we ought to start to engage in this trade war. It is not just manufacturing. Everything I read pertaining to Japan pertains to the United States of America. That is where our technology has gone. So do not say I have to understand globalization and free trade, free trade. The word ``trade'' means just that. It is not free. They continue to treat it as aid, and we are not in a position now to do that. We have to aid our hometown communities in America and rebuild our industrial strength and our economic might. That is what is on this Senator's mind. I wish there were others in the Chamber to debate the Andean Trade Preference Expansion Act because this bill is a hope to the solution of the drug problem. This is not trade. We do not get anything, but we hope if we can give them more textiles to produce, they will get out of producing cocaine and produce T-shirts and send them to us. That is the whole Andean trade bill. This is the biggest sham I have ever seen. Incidentally, I remembered one point I wanted to emphasize about productivity. The textile worker of the United States of America is the most productive textile worker in the world. In fact, let me embellish. The industrial worker of the United States is the most productive industrial worker in the entire world. Madam President, what is not producing is the U.S. Government, this Congress, this Senate. I am hopeful we can start discussing real issues and cut out all the political and parliamentary maneuvers so we can vote on the Dorgan amendment. I have plenty other amendments that pertain to the bill with respect to trade adjustment assistance for post-NAFTA workers, some 53,900 in my State. You cannot ask me to vote for some and not for all. We have to be fair with everyone. That is our hope, our duty, and our responsibility. I do appreciate the distinguished Chair indulging me this afternoon. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Broadband Telecommunications Act of 2002. This legislation is designed to promote the deployment of broadband technology in rural and under-served areas of the market. The Internet has unquestionably revolutionized our society, making it possible to transmit data and engage in commerce in a manner not previously experienced. However, notwithstanding its enormous benefits, the Internet is still in its building stage, with its greatest capacity yet to be reached. An important element in enhancing the Internet's capability is the technology known as ``broadband.'' This refers to the technologies and facilities that enhance the speed and efficiency by which voice, video, data communications are transmitted. Many, in fact, believe that broadband is the key to securing the Internet as the central medium of interstate and global commerce. Once extensively and fully deployed and accepted by consumers and the marketplace, broadband will undoubtedly produce marvelous advantages: permitting physicians to consult with each other and share information instantaneously, thus enriching the learning process; allowing consumers to access entertainment including music and movies, as well as other products at any given time; and offering workers greater options, as it will facilitate the ability of workers to access from home, electronic files as well as communicate with coworkers by voice and video. Before this great vision can be realized, however, several key issues will have to be addressed. These include ensuring that broadband is deployed to all Americans and promoting consumer confidence in the Internet, while simultaneously preserving competition in the telecommunications and Internet markets. With respect to broadband deployment, telephone and cable companies have been upgrading their networks, in order to provide broadband service. As it stands today, broadband availability for residential Internet users is approximately 85 percent. However, even though this number is admirable, there are still specific areas where broadband capability has yet to take hold. This predicament mostly involves rural, as well as some inner city areas. Ensuring the availability of broadband in these markets is the public policy challenge we face today. Clearly, Congress' main responsibility is ensuring that the right policy is pursued and implemented to accomplish this goal. Reports indicate that small telephone companies, have been diligently rolling out broadband service in rural areas. Nevertheless, to achieve the goal of broadband deployment in all rural and underserved areas, the government will need to provide some assistance. In recognition of this need, Senators Rockefeller and Dorgan both members of the Commerce Committee, have sponsored bills to support such deployments with options such as low interest loans and tax credits. The approach taken by Senators Rockefeller and Dorgan represent a constructive approach to achieving greater broadband deployment. Financial assistance, through measures such as loans, grants, and tax incentives, is necessary to help defray the cost of these additional deployments. By providing loans and grants, the bill I introduce today takes a similar approach to achieving broadband deployment. In addition to deployment of broadband facilities, there also is an issue concerning broadband speeds. Currently, the broadband facilities that are being deployed to residential consumers provide speeds of up to 1.5 megabits per second. However, groups such as TechNet, maintain that in order to realize the real potential of broadband--telemedicine, distance learning, teleworking, and entertainment over the Internet, telecommunications facilities must be able to provide speeds of 50 to 100 megabits. If this is correct, as policy makers we must, at a minimum, determine what is necessary both technologically and financially to accomplish this goal. Such findings will provide the basis to determine the policies Congress will be compelled to pursue if a determination is made that speeds of 50 to 100 megabits per second are necessary. Even as we discuss broadband speeds of 50-100 megabits, we must acknowledge that consumers do not seem seduced by the available broadband speeds of 1.5 megabits. In fact, reports show, that about 10 percent actually subscribe to broadband, leading many to believe that low demand is the problem, not slow deployment. If achieving a broadband environment is a priority, in addition to spurring deployment, we must eliminate the impediments that block consumers from obtaining the content, services, and applications necessary to make broadband service a useful and productive tool. Another essential issue concerning the promotion of broadband involves the issue of privacy. Consumers use of the Internet is a fundamental first step to promoting interest in broadband. This will not be possible, however, unless consumers are confident that their privacy and personal information are protected and secured. To accomplish this goal, sufficient precautions will have to be taken to ensure that highly sensitive personal data--including financial, medical, social security numbers--cannot be stolen or misused. The Commerce Committee has established a substantial record on the issue of Internet privacy. That record demonstrates that consumers will use the Internet for more personal purposes only when they are confident that their information is secure. I have introduced separate legislation on this matter. The broadband bill entitled the Broadband Telecommunications Act of 2002, that I introduce today represents a step towards fostering the deployment and adoption of broadband services. It uses monies from the telephone excise tax to fund a number of loan and grant programs. It stimulates broadband deployment in rural and underserved areas by providing low interest loans to upgrade facilities including remote terminals and fiber between a remote terminal and central office. It authorizes NIST to study how we can facilitate broadband deployment in rural and under-served areas. It promotes competition by establishing pilot projects for wireless and other non-wireline broadband technologies in rural and underserved areas. The bill begins to help us understand what is necessary to accomplish broadband with speeds of 50 to 100 megabits per second by providing grants to NTIA's Lab, NIST Labs, National Science Board and to universities for research. In order to address the demand issue, we provide grants to digitize library and museum collections as well as grants to Universities to conduct technical research to develop Internet applications useful to consumers. The bill also provides grants to connect under-represented colleges and communities to the Internet. Ultimately, if we decide as a nation that a broadband world must be achieved, we must move beyond the rhetoric of parity and regulation versus deregulation. We must move forward and begin to deal with the real issues that impact broadband deployment and use. These include stimulating deployment in unserved and under-served areas, promoting competition to existing monopolies, ensuring the availability of content and other Internet applications, preserving the privacy of consumers as they use the Internet, safeguarding cyber security, in addition to advancing policies such as e-government, teleworking, telemedicine, and distance learning. I ask my colleagues to join me in an open and forthright debate on these issues.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Broadband Telecommunications Act of 2002. This legislation is designed to promote the deployment of broadband technology in rural and under-served areas of the market. The Internet has unquestionably revolutionized our society, making it possible to transmit data and engage in commerce in a manner not previously experienced. However, notwithstanding its enormous benefits, the Internet is still in its building stage, with its greatest capacity yet to be reached. An important element in enhancing the Internet's capability is the technology known as ``broadband.'' This refers to the technologies and facilities that enhance the speed and efficiency by which voice, video, data communications are transmitted. Many, in fact, believe that broadband is the key to securing the Internet as the central medium of interstate and global commerce. Once extensively and fully deployed and accepted by consumers and the marketplace, broadband will undoubtedly produce marvelous advantages: permitting physicians to consult with each other and share information instantaneously, thus enriching the learning process; allowing consumers to access entertainment including music and movies, as well as other products at any given time; and offering workers greater options, as it will facilitate the ability of workers to access from home, electronic files as well as communicate with coworkers by voice and video. Before this great vision can be realized, however, several key issues will have to be addressed. These include ensuring that broadband is deployed to all Americans and promoting consumer confidence in the Internet, while simultaneously preserving competition in the telecommunications and Internet markets. With respect to broadband deployment, telephone and cable companies have been upgrading their networks, in order to provide broadband service. As it stands today, broadband availability for residential Internet users is approximately 85 percent. However, even though this number is admirable, there are still specific areas where broadband capability has yet to take hold. This predicament mostly involves rural, as well as some inner city areas. Ensuring the availability of broadband in these markets is the public policy challenge we face today. Clearly, Congress' main responsibility is ensuring that the right policy is pursued and implemented to accomplish this goal. Reports indicate that small telephone companies, have been diligently rolling out broadband service in rural areas. Nevertheless, to achieve the goal of broadband deployment in all rural and underserved areas, the government will need to provide some assistance. In recognition of this need, Senators Rockefeller and Dorgan both members of the Commerce Committee, have sponsored bills to support such deployments with options such as low interest loans and tax credits. The approach taken by Senators Rockefeller and Dorgan represent a constructive approach to achieving greater broadband deployment. Financial assistance, through measures such as loans, grants, and tax incentives, is necessary to help defray the cost of these additional deployments. By providing loans and grants, the bill I introduce today takes a similar approach to achieving broadband deployment. In addition to deployment of broadband facilities, there also is an issue concerning broadband speeds. Currently, the broadband facilities that are being deployed to residential consumers provide speeds of up to 1.5 megabits per second. However, groups such as TechNet, maintain that in order to realize the real potential of broadband--telemedicine, distance learning, teleworking, and entertainment over the Internet, telecommunications facilities must be able to provide speeds of 50 to 100 megabits. If this is correct, as policy makers we must, at a minimum, determine what is necessary both technologically and financially to accomplish this goal. Such findings will provide the basis to determine the policies Congress will be compelled to pursue if a determination is made that speeds of 50 to 100 megabits per second are necessary. Even as we discuss broadband speeds of 50-100 megabits, we must acknowledge that consumers do not seem seduced by the available broadband speeds of 1.5 megabits. In fact, reports show, that about 10 percent actually subscribe to broadband, leading many to believe that low demand is the problem, not slow deployment. If achieving a broadband environment is a priority, in addition to spurring deployment, we must eliminate the impediments that block consumers from obtaining the content, services, and applications necessary to make broadband service a useful and productive tool. Another essential issue concerning the promotion of broadband involves the issue of privacy. Consumers use of the Internet is a fundamental first step to promoting interest in broadband. This will not be possible, however, unless consumers are confident that their privacy and personal information are protected and secured. To accomplish this goal, sufficient precautions will have to be taken to ensure that highly sensitive personal data--including financial, medical, social security numbers--cannot be stolen or misused. The Commerce Committee has established a substantial record on the issue of Internet privacy. That record demonstrates that consumers will use the Internet for more personal purposes only when they are confident that their information is secure. I have introduced separate legislation on this matter. The broadband bill entitled the Broadband Telecommunications Act of 2002, that I introduce today represents a step towards fostering the deployment and adoption of broadband services. It uses monies from the telephone excise tax to fund a number of loan and grant programs. It stimulates broadband deployment in rural and underserved areas by providing low interest loans to upgrade facilities including remote terminals and fiber between a remote terminal and central office. It authorizes NIST to study how we can facilitate broadband deployment in rural and under-served areas. It promotes competition by establishing pilot projects for wireless and other non-wireline broadband technologies in rural and underserved areas. The bill begins to help us understand what is necessary to accomplish broadband with speeds of 50 to 100 megabits per second by providing grants to NTIA's Lab, NIST Labs, National Science Board and to universities for research. In order to address the demand issue, we provide grants to digitize library and museum collections as well as grants to Universities to conduct technical research to develop Internet applications useful to consumers. The bill also provides grants to connect under-represented colleges and communities to the Internet. Ultimately, if we decide as a nation that a broadband world must be achieved, we must move beyond the rhetoric of parity and regulation versus deregulation. We must move forward and begin to deal with the real issues that impact broadband deployment and use. These include stimulating deployment in unserved and under-served areas, promoting competition to existing monopolies, ensuring the availability of content and other Internet applications, preserving the privacy of consumers as they use the Internet, safeguarding cyber security, in addition to advancing policies such as e-government, teleworking, telemedicine, and distance learning. I ask my colleagues to join me in an open and forthright debate on these issues.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. It says: But as the provider of Israel's sword and furnisher of its diplomatic shield, America is being held responsible. In most of the world, but not America, pictures of the bulldozed refugee camps plaster the front pages. To an extent that Americans do not realize, being blamed for Israel's actions is ripping up the coalition Mr. Bush took such pains to knit together last September. How can he patch it back together? Well, he is trying, and this amendment doesn't help him. It doesn't help him a bit. We know that. Since September 11, times are different. Yes, there is a war on terrorism, and how do we succeed in that war? We cannot do it alone, as the President says. We need the assistance of everyone--particularly in the Mideast which, in a general sense, has the majority, I would say, of terrorism and terrorists. So we have to go about it in a very careful fashion. For this Senator's interest, I think we can go after Saddam Hussein, but first let's stabilize our friend Israel. You have to have first things first. We found in the artillery in World War II, no matter how well the gun was aimed, if the recoil would kill the gun crew, you don't fire. So before we start firing on countries, let's take care of the countries that are being fired upon. Let's take care of Israel. Let's give solidarity to Israel--solidarity of support. In my judgment, it was wrong for Ariel Sharon to go to the Temple Mount with in-your-face kind of politics and leadership; to bulldoze the camps; and to extend settlements, all condemned by the United States. Then along comes this one-sided amendment like there is no cognizance or awareness of the complexity of this situation. Our credibility is at stake and everybody should pay particular attention. Now we are working with Pakistan, who we were formerly against, in the war on terrorism. We got their help. We are going to Jordan and getting their help. We are going to Egypt, but Mubarak is in a tenuous position that he had to cut off contacts with Israel. So this is a complicated thing. But to come with this simplistic one- sided amendment is not in the interest of Israel and not in the interest of the United States. We ought to do like Richard Cohen says: Let's listen awhile, set this aside, and move on and continue our 100-percent solidarity with Israel. This doesn't furnish it. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I will probably be from South Dakota after I make a few comments because I think the amendment is ill-timed and not in the best interests of the United States and not in the best interests of Israel. I say not in the best interests of Israel--I agree, with the various items listed in the ``Sense of Congress''--and you can go through (1) through (7)--``(1) stands in solidarity with Israel . . . ''--there is no question about that--``(2) remains committed to Israel's right to self-defense''--and on down the particular seven points. I do not have to explain it. I have a 35-year voting record for Israel. But as to what the amendment does not say--it is not what it says; it is what is not said that bothers me. The distinguished colleague from Connecticut talks about the humanity. Well, where is the humanity on the Palestinian side here? That is what we are looking for. Five years from now, 10 years from now, 50 years from now, there is bound to be an Israel. I think there is going to be a Palestine. The task is to get these folks as neighbors living together. Where is the humanity? This comes at a particularly tenuous time. We just got the President engaged. I say that advisedly. It was an affirmative action plan that we are not going to fool with Israel. All these other Presidents did. Let them do what they are going to do. But we got him engaged. Now we have Crown Prince Abdullah from Saudi Arabia engaged and visiting. And he is offering, categorically, recognition of the Israeli state. He says Syria and the rest of them--including Egypt and Jordan-- will all go along. They all will join in. Some say that is propaganda. Don't give me that propaganda stuff. Let's try it. We have Secretary Powell making his visits, and then along comes this political amendment. I have been up here a long time, and it would be easier for me to just walk to the desk, vote aye, go home, and not have to answer the phone. I know because I made a comment in the earlier part of the year that I thought Ariel Sharon was the Bull Conner of Israel. As for Arafat--I think he wants to be a martyr, he wants to be killed, he cannot be trusted. In any event, I know what it is to be critical. I finally found some solace the other day for saying anything at all. Here is a column by Richard Cohen, from the day before yesterday in the Washington Post. I ask unanimous consent the article in its entirety be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. He says, in concluding: ``The only way out of the current mess is for each side to listen. . . . Nobody in America believes we are not for Israel. It is perfectly obvious. We have given them all the equipment. We have given them the economic aid. We will give them what is necessary. We admire that little country right in the middle of the Mideast, the progress she is making. Yitzhak Rabin could see it. But his own folks killed him. And Anwar Sadat could see the progress Egypt was making, and his own folks killed him. We talk about the Palestinian Authority in one breath and in the next breath say: Who has the authority? The Palestinians? No. The Israelis have the authority. This is a very complex issue. I remember back in World War II, in the occupation, where the French would take out a German soldier on the corner, and then the Germans would retaliate and then just wipe out the block. We all know about that. Several years ago, I was in Kosovo. And some Albanians would get feeling good, and they would take out a Serb policeman on the corner, and along would come the Serbian army and they would clean out the block. Now along comes Sharon, and he must learn the lessons of the past. He is making more terrorists than he is getting rid of. He sounds formal--``I am getting rid of the infrastructure''--like there is a structure. There is no structure to this mess. Anybody who thinks Arafat is in charge, to the extent that he is in charge because we have a deal with somebody. He is in charge, but Hamas, Hezbollah, and all, they use him. This is a tricky part of the world. And we are looking for friends in the war on terrorism. And they have been going along with us. Now we could come along and start losing friends with this kind of leadership and the categorical one-sided endorsement of it. I was not prepared to talk about this, but I did not know this was going to come up today. But in conscience, I cannot support it. Let me cite what Richard Cohen says: The only way out of the current mess is for each side to listen. . . . Don't you think it would be good for Congress, as the President asked over on the House side--that this is not the right time for us to vote on this resolution. I heard earlier today that the White House is not taking a position, but we know they do not support it. Can't we help the President in this tenuous situation? Quoting Richard Cohen again: The only way out of the current mess is for each side to listen to what the other is saying. To protest living conditions on the West Bank is not anti-Semitism. To condemn the increasing encroachment of Jewish settlements is not anti-Semitism. To protest the cuffing that the Israelis sometimes give the international press is not anti-Semitism either. To suggest, finally, that Ariel Sharon is a rejectionist who provocatively egged on the Palestinians is not anti- Semitism. It is a criticism no more steeped in bigotry than the assertion that Yasser Arafat is a liar who cannot be trusted. That does not make me anti-Arab--just a realist who is sick and tired of lazy labels. Let's go in the resolution to the labels and the whereas. How can you live with that? We fight the terrorists and we fight all those who give them aid. America has a message for the nations of the world: If you harbor terrorists, you are terrorists. If you train or arm a terrorist, you are a terrorist. If you feed a terrorist or fund a terrorist, you are a terrorist, and you will be held accountable by the United States and our friends. Crown Prince Abdullah just left Crawford, TX. The Saudis are funding terrorism, I can tell you that. Go to the religious schools in Pakistan. As we saw on TV, the Saudis have been funding them for a long time. But we can't say that about the Saudis, we have to get oil. In any event, who is the terrorist here with respect to the situation? Do the Saudis qualify as terrorists under this resolution? Madam President, the situation in the Middle East is such that you have the creation of more terrorists under this approach. The Arabs, by the way, think we are terrorists. In fact, that is what they call us. In the U.N., they have brought resolutions against the United States in the past. The U.N. passed resolutions to send weapons inspectors into Iraq. We condemned Saddam for not letting them in. Now the U.N. formed a team to investigate the incursion into Jenin. Sharon refuses to let the U.N. investigate, so in a way he's acting like Saddam Hussein. Max Rodenbeck, in an article on April 17 in the New York Times, wrote: While other Arabs have always taken the Palestinians' side, the violent images are increasing the sense of personal interest in the conflict. When half a million Moroccans marched in a recent protest against Israel, many carried placards saying: We are all Palestinians. So according to this amendment, everybody in Morocco is a terrorist. Any Palestinian you see defending his house, as we have been watching on TV--even if he had no connection whatsoever to any of these individuals with the explosives or the suicidal terrorists, or even if he doesn't like Arafat--is a terrorist. Incidentally, there have been five attempts that someone just told me about on Arafat's life--not by Israelis, but by Arabs, by Palestinians. So if I am in my home, defending my home, and I see a soldier come shooting his way in, and I shoot him, all of a sudden I am a terrorist. If you don't have uniforms, I guess you are terrorists. If you have uniforms, then you are soldiers. How do you deal with Arafat if you are going to call him a terrorist in one breath and the Palestinian leader in the next breath? This is too simplistic. We have had enough blood on both sides. Now we are getting to where the administration is taking charge--and I commend them for it. We are making some progress, and they have freed Arafat. But section No. 5 calls on the Palestinian Authority, actually it demands that the Palestinian Authority fulfill its commitment to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas. And the Palestinian Authority--that is what we call an oxymoron. Let's not kid ourselves, this isn't any authority, but it's the best term we have. Sharon--and I am quoting Andy Rooney, who said the other night on ``60 Minutes'': Sharon is not our friend and President Bush should stop pussy-footing and say so. Both sides are coming in and calling names, and that is what this amendment does. It doesn't help anybody but us Washington politicians. This is the London Economist, of April 20. I ask unanimous consent that this be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes. One fellow from Ohio gave a lot of political contributions. We didn't have any bananas. Do you know where they grow bananas?

Mr. HOLLINGS. They have got no embarrassment, I can tell you that.

Mr. HOLLINGS. As the Senator has pointed out, the blasphemy is that the most productive farmer in the world is the American farmer. The most productive industrial worker in the world is the American industrial worker. What is not producing is us the Congress. Forty years ago, we produced poultry in South Carolina. We produced peaches-- in fact, more peaches than the State of Georgia. I landed in Europe. I had the same experience. Leave that on the plane and destroy it. You are not bringing fresh peaches in here, they told me. You are not bringing your poultry in here. Rules are rules. This isn't aid. This is trade. Everybody looks out for the agricultural strength of their nations. That is what we are elected to office to do. But Heaven above, you would think I was a Communist or something in here trying to stop fast track. Fast track is a dirty, no good political gimmick. Everybody knows that. Yet they continue to go on with this thing to get a fix and not take the responsibility. And then when they have to explain it: Well, it was take it or leave it. I wanted to support the President and everything. Of course, we all want to support the President. But that is the story. Here it is. We are losing out agriculturally, and the Chinese are the ones winning. When you have 1.3 billion people, they can produce more than our 280 million. They have 600 or 700 million farmers, at least, or more. How many million farmers do we have? We have about 3.5 million farmers in the United States of America. They are outstanding. I am not belittling them in any sense. But 3.5 million can't produce what 700 million Chinese farmers produce, and at the cost and everything else like that. They don't have the environmental rules and regs and everything else of that kind. I appreciate the body yielding the floor. My plea is, let's be fair to each other. Just don't come here and try to do away with the Jones Act now when we are trying to build America. Please don't do away with the industrial strength of the United States, pointing a finger: You are a protectionist; we are not going to start protectionism. That is what built the country--good, strong protectionism.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is the case. The unfairness of it is here in the ``Foreign Trade Barriers'' book from 10 years ago. I think we spotted it with about 260 pages and 10 years hence that we got free trade. We are getting rid of the barriers, remember. We are helping out agriculture by decimating our industrial strength. I am trying to open the eyes of my farmer Senator friends. Instead of 260 pages, this book is 453 pages. When I held up this book yesterday, it was very interesting. Oh, it just put these fleet a flitter. They gathered around and you can tell the fixes they got--we are trading more. Well, wait a minute, you are getting more trade agreements? Your debate has been all year long that you are losing out on the agreements, that we are passing them by. All these countries are getting agreements and we are not getting any. Of course, that is not the case. Let's look now and see. For example, Korea had 10 pages of restrictions here in 1992. In 2002, they have gone to 27 pages. Japan has gone from 18 pages of restrictions to 42--they are not lowering barriers. The European economic community, 32 pages in 1992. They have come down to 20 pages. We are doing pretty good there. I hope we can do better than with bananas. We don't even produce a banana. These special Trade Representatives ought to be embarrassed. India's was 8 pages, and it went up to 14. You can see what is happening in these countries-- where we are supposed to be lowering the barriers, we are increasing them with trade agreements. So, come on, let's stop, look, and listen. Give each Senator a chance to stop, look, and listen. Don't give me those fast tracks and whip it on through with the special interest lawyers. I tell my textile people, the lawyers are working this thing on K street; I have nothing to do with it. By the time I get a bite at the apple and a chance to even discuss it, they give me limited time, and the vote is already fixed. Nobody listens because the vote is already fixed. So why pay attention to the thing? Let's move on. We have to get our work done around here. So nothing happens. We are supposed to learn and exchange views from all parts of the country. When I came here 35 years ago, I tell you it was an educational experience. We didn't have TV, so if you wanted to find out what was going on, you were in the cloakroom. There were always 25 to 30 Senators in either cloakroom and you could engage in debate, listen to the other Senators, their experience, and their constituent needs and things of that kind. And then we had a concurrent majority to move forward for the good of the country.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is right.

Mr. HOLLINGS. John McCain is right--money controls, campaign finance is needed. I can tell you that right now. We haven't gotten it yet. We are moving in that direction about soft money, but we have doubled the contributions and everything else. That was a compromise Senator McCain had to make. Now I have to travel to California, maybe Nevada, and New York, and maybe Missouri even to get that kind of money. I cannot find that in South Carolina. Even a Republican friend--and I have some Republican friends, but they don't want to contribute. If their name appeared in the little news squib, and they might say Saturday night when they go to the club: Why did you give to that Democrat? Why embarrass the family and the wife and everybody else? They just don't give. So I travel around the country, and beg from my friends and try to stay in office. They have been good to me. Here I am. But I cannot get the attention of anybody. I used to say I would love to serve in the Senate rather than practice law because I not only could make the final arguments, like I used to in the courtroom, but I can go in the jury room and vote. But the vote means nothing. Now the way this thing is geared up, over the past 35 years we don't have a discussion, don't have the deliberateness or the consideration. I appreciate the distinguished Senator from Nevada yielding. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HOLLINGS. That is the case. The distinguished Senator from North Dakota has followed this in a judicious fashion. He and I have worked together, but he has really been the leader to get some sensibility and attention to the dilemma. All we ask on the floor of the Senate is a chance to do our job. In article I, section 8 of the Constitution, it is not the President, not the Supreme Court, but the Congress that shall regulate foreign commerce. This is so we can look at these little side deals and the things that were negotiated that we didn't know about, as the distinguished Senator points out. The lawyers on K Street and the White House make the need for fast track up. They fix the vote. They don't call it until they have a 60- vote margin to cut off debate. Here we have been waiting dutifully to put up our amendments. And there has been a little difficulty on finalizing the leadership amendment, but once it is filed, we are ready to go. We have been ready to go. Don't blame us for holding this up for however many days. We are not trying to hold it up. We are just asking the Senate, please kill this so-called fast track. We haven't had it for the past several years. There have been some 200 agreements without fast track. That is what the Senator from North Dakota is speaking to.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I would be delighted to yield, if we have time.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, my plea is to the brothers and sisters in the lodge this afternoon. It came to mind last evening, when I met with the maritime folks that if our Amtrak is about to be phased out in October, and rail transportation is about to end for the passengers, and if the airlines are all in financial difficulty, we need more American construction, American ships, crewed with American crews, and those kinds of things. Yet we are just about to pass a wonderful farm bill. They have gotten together in a compromise on the farm legislation. This Senator has supported agriculture for nearly 50 years in public office. In fact, I took my farmers to the west coast. I found out, back 40 years ago, that our total farm income in South Carolina was around $380 million, and out in Orange County, CA, one county had $384 million in total farm income. So they knew something more about agriculture than we did. And we had a 100-year start in agriculture in the little State of South Carolina before they had even founded California. So I have been in the vanguard, in the forefront of developing our corn and our soybeans. The grain elevator was constructed when I was Governor. I could go on down the list of the different caucuses we have developed and the trips we made with the farmers to the markets overseas. Just please, I ask my farm friends, don't give me this protectionism talk about we are ruining trade and trade relations and trade agreements, having gotten all the subsidies, all the protection you could possibly imagine. They have gotten this 73-some-odd-billion-dollar farm bill. They get all the subsidies, which I support. And I hope the Senate supports it. They get the Ex-Im Bank to finance. I see one of my agricultural Senator friends coming to the Chamber. I am sure he is not going to talk about protectionism. I am trying to get some of the farm votes to help us on fast track. Then they get the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. They get all the help. I experienced this when I campaigned out in Iowa in the '80s. They had me on an early morning news show there in Des Moines, and they said: Senator, how do you come from a textile State with all that protection and subsidies, and you expect to get the farm vote? They had no idea I did not get any subsidies. I was just trying to hold on to the jobs that we had. So we need the farmers' help. Don't talk about Public Law 480. I know one of the Senators from Iowa has a favorite. After he gets his subsidies, then he comes on the floor and he says: No. We want to ship our PL-480s, our agriculture, under this Federal act to the other countries of the world because we can do it cheaper. Well, we can produce agriculture cheaper, too. We almost did with the Freedom to Farm Act, but it did not work. But it can be done. So don't give us: Let's do away with it, having gotten all of mine, then I want yours, too. In essence, the farmers ought to wake up. I want to show what has happened in agriculture with these charts I have in the Chamber. This chart shows that in 1996, under the Department of Commerce figures, we exported more than $8 billion of corn annually. And you can see where it has gone. It went down in the year 2000 to about $4.5 billion. Now, why? The Chinese are not only producing textiles, they are producing corn. I followed the statistical flow downwards of wheat. I asked about the Chinese, how do they do it? And the answer is, they are very clever. Now they are shipping their wheat to Korea, Japan, and other places, and still importing ours so as to keep an appearance of the need for wheat. But, actually, they are exporting more than they are importing. Let's look at the agriculture surpluses from the chart I have in the Chamber. I want everyone to know that we are not only losing our manufacturing capability, our industrial backbone, but the United States has lost agriculture surplus since NAFTA. Beginning in 1994 we had about a $1 billion surplus with Mexico and Canada in agriculture. Now that we have free trade, free trade, free trade, we have a deficit of close to $1.5 billion. Well, we are bound to lose with the higher standard of living in the United States of America. We are bound to lose some industrial jobs. But we are going to pick up agriculture. Ah, no, sirree, we did not pick it up. They are losing their shirt and don't even know it. That is what we want our farmer Senators to know about. They are losing their shirt and don't even know it. They have been going out of business. And you are going back home and saying: Look, look what we have done. We have helped you. You need even more protection. Here is what has happened with respect to citrus. We went from a $700 million surplus to about $650 million surplus in our exports. We have our Senator here who said it was sort of immoral. We had a moral obligation to go along with the Andean trade pact. They needed help. We are trying to get them out of drugs and tell them to grow bananas and pineapples. That is what it is all about. What do you think we have gotten from Colombia? Not a thing in that agreement. From Ecuador, from Bolivia? We did not get anything in that one-way agreement. But here is what happened with citrus. Now, I do not like to be vindictive or seem to be petty, but I would like to come down to the 17-percent tariff on textiles from the Andean countries and bring citrus down from 50 percent--50 percent, I say to the Senator--down to the 17 percent. Tell these citrus boys, tell these agriculture boys, don't talk about China and Japan and India, be fair, be fair; Mexico, be fair. Let's be fair to each other. We are all U.S. Senators. We represent one country. And we represent agriculture. I have agriculture and I have textiles. I have steel. I told a story about Nucor. I am glad President Bush acted. Here is wheat. Where are those wheat farmers? In 1996, we exported more than $6 billion in Durum wheat. In 2001, we exported less than $3.5 billion. You are going out of business, Senator. You are gone. I am losing my textiles. You are losing your wheat. They can give us a little tin cup and we can stand out on the sidewalk and beg because you and I are being put out of business. You are a leader here on trying to awake the town and tell the people.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. It reads: Do NAFTA judges have too much authority? Let me read: When a Mississippi jury slapped a $500 million judgment on Loewen Group, a Canadian funeral-home chain, in 1995 for breaching a contract with a hometown rival, the company quickly settled a case for $129 million but then decided to appeal. But instead of going to a U.S. court, the Canadians took their case to an obscure three-judge panel that stands distinctly apart from the U.S. legal system. And that panel's decision cannot be appealed. Thanks to some fine print in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the case of Loewen Group vs. U.S. is just one of two dozen wending their way through a little-known and highly secretive process. Let me read that sentence one more time. That is the reason we opposed fast track. We will have a time agreement, 2 hours a side, or 4 hours, or debate it this afternoon. You never get the obscure addendum and other things agreed to. They don't tell you about them. Thanks to some fine print in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the case of Loewen Group vs. U.S. is just one of two dozen winding their way through a little-known highly secretive process. The panels, using arbitration procedures established by the World Bank, were supposed to ensure the governments in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada would pay compensation to any foreign investor whose property they might seize. U.S. business groups originally demanded the investor-protection mechanism, noting that the Mexican government had a history of nationalizing its oil, electricity, and banking industries, including many U.S. assets. But even some of NAFTA's strongest supporters say the clever and creative lawyers in all 3 countries are rapidly expanding the anti-expropriation clause in unanticipated ways. ``The question in a lot of these pending cases is, will the panels produce a pattern of decisions that the negotiators never envisioned?'' says Charles E. Roh Jr, deputy chief U.S. negotiator for NAFTA, now a partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLC. Some of the early indications, he says, ``are troubling.'' But there are some examples here. There is not only the particular funeral home case, but: UPS claims that the Canadian post, the state-owned postal system, uses its monopoly on letter mail to gain unfair advantages in parcel deliveries. In the matter of the Canadian manufacturer, Methanex, versus the United States: The Canadian manufacturer of a gasoline additive sued after California found the health-threatening chemical had contaminated water, and banned its use. So after the California authorities have the hearings and everything else, they find out it is contaminative. As a result, they ban the use. No, you take that up to the secret panel of NAFTA judges, who meet in secret, decide in secret, and if you can get a fix--like you can get the fix of the vote around here--what happens is the California proceeding, totally in the open, is overturned. The legal process is totally frustrated. I will read one more example. Those who are interested can follow the particular article, Metalclad v. Mexico: U.S. company sued after it obtains permits from the Mexican federal government for a waste disposal site. Then localities denied a permit to operate. They said that was taking away their particular business. You can go on and on, but it is a two-way street. Lawyers on both sides of the border are using this particular secretive measure. Although many of the current cases raise questions, business groups insist that NAFTA-like panels are needed in all trade deals because so many developing nations have poor judicial systems. But they allow that the process may still need some tweaking. ``Of course, if I look at the filed cases so far, I could write a pretty scary story,'' says Scott Miller, a Washington lobbyist for Procter & Gamble Co. and Eric Biehl, a former top Commerce Dept. official, wonders ``how does some mechanism on a trade agreement that no one ever thought much about suddenly get used to open up a whole new appellate process around the U.S. judicial system?'' That's a question a lot more people may soon be asking. The distinguished Senator from North Dakota asked the question. That is what this amendment does. It goes to the heart of that secretive process, trying to get transparency. I think there should be a greater enforcement provision in this particular amendment. Maybe we can have the amendment itself amended. Be that as it may, this ought to receive 100 bipartisan votes in the Senate against the secret process of the NAFTA panels that no one ever heard of. ``The Highest Court You've Never Heard Of,'' says Business Week. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HOLLINGS

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

Mr. HOLLINGS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I may proceed for 10 minutes as in morning business. I understand the leader and others will momentarily be on the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank the distinguished Presiding Officer.