Fritz Hollings

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise in support of S. 927, a bill to reauthorize the National Sea Grant College Program. First, I offer my thanks to Senator Snowe, the primary sponsor of the bill. Sea Grant is a results-oriented program that builds bridges among Government, academia, and industry, putting information and technology from research laboratories into the hands of the people who can really use it. The National Sea Grant Program serves as a successful model for multidisciplinary research directed at scientific advancement and economic development. Sea Grant has improved the competitiveness of the Nation's coastal and marine economy by increasing the pool of skilled manpower, fostering scientific achievement, facilitating technology transfer, and educating the public on critical resource and environmental issues. Mr. President, the 1966 Stratton Commission outlined a seminal vision for the benefits this Nation could derive from the oceans and coasts. The Sea Grant Program has played a vital part in realizing that vision. Today, Sea Grant researchers are examining important problems affecting our marine resources. This research is not just being put on a shelf. It is being used to improve aquaculture, market new technologies, develop pharmaceuticals, educate our young people, manage fisheries, and much more. This legislation, S. 927, will carry Sea Grant into its next 30 years by strengthening the Sea Grant Program, improving the procedures by which it operates, clarifying the respective roles of the Federal Government and the universities that participate in the program, and reducing administrative costs. I urge all of my colleagues to join me in supporting this important program and the passage of the bill.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, today we are passing important legislation which I strongly oppose by voice vote. The normal Senate procedure would be to vote on such an important bill, and I do not like to see Senators avoid a recorded vote on a bill with such dire implications for public education. However, the President has committed to veto the full bill, and I am confident from repeated past votes that if we did not have this commitment, the Senate would block the bill. Also, without this commitment, I would be glad not only to force a vote, but also to discuss the bill at length. In fact, there is a healthy sign that even supporters of the ill- advised idea of starting a taxpayer-funded private school voucher program are re-thinking their support. Five days ago, the House defeated a private school voucher plan. Thirty-five House Republicans voted against creation of a voucher program on the basis that the legislation did not include basic civil rights protections that also are absent in the bill before us. The United States Catholic Conference opposed that bill. I quote here from their letter: An additional reason why the USCC is unable to support H.R. 2746 is the ``Not School Aid'' provision in the new section 6405(a). . . . Section 6405(a) can readily be construed to negate the application of longstanding civil rights statutes, in particular, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title X of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, that would normally apply to a scholarship program. In other words, by saying that the federal aid going to private schools under a voucher program is ``not school aid'' the bill proponents excuse them from full compliance with federal protections that currently apply to public schools. Mr. President, that is not just my interpretation or that of the Catholic Conference. That is the reading of proponents of the bill. Specifically, Mr. Clint Bolick, who has a group named ``Institute for Justice,'' has been agitating to start taxpayer funding for private school tuitions. Here is what Mr. Bolick said about the Catholic Conference and civil rights in a memo that leaked out last month: Dick Komer and I met with representatives of the Catholic Conference, who urged that the bill contain the full panoply of federal civil rights regulations, including Title IX (gender) and disability provisions. We argued strongly against those regulations. We are pleased to report that the final bill contains only a general anti-discrimination requirement and expressly provides that schools are not ``recipients of federal funds.'' So Mr. Bolick ``argued strongly'' against civil rights for girls and disabled children, but he is pleased to report that schools receiving vouchers would not be ``recipients of federal funds.'' This is absurd. The federal government today spends about $12 billion on elementary and secondary education. That is about $250 per child in a public school. But the proponents of this bill want from the outset to give private schools $3,200 per child in federal funds. If we do that, just three voucher children would provide a private school with more federal assistance than we provide to a whole public school classroom. If that is ``Not School Aid,'' I don't know what is. There are a lot of public school classrooms that would like to have $3,200 per child in federal assistance, and they would not be crowing about how basic civil rights protections were rolled back. I say this to criticize this proposed legislation, not the private schools. I believe that we have a duty as public servants to fund the public schools, and we have a duty to the private schools to leave them alone. I support private schools. About nine out of ten are religious, and I particularly support their freedom to stay that way without federal intervention. Make no mistake. If we go down this road of putting $3,200 per child of federal taxpayers' money into private school classrooms, federal regulation will follow and that will be a tragedy. This is not conjecture, the Bush Administration studied it. In a report titled ``Choice of Schools in Six Nations,'' here is what they found: For those who believe strongly in religious schooling and fear that government influence will come with public funding, reason exists for their concern. Catholic or Protestant schools in each of the nations studied have increasingly been assimilated to the assumptions and guiding values of public schooling. This process does not even seem to be the result of deliberate efforts . . . but rather of the difficulty for a private school playing by public rules, to maintain its distance from the common assumptions and habits of the predominant system. World Bank economist Estelle James did a similar survey and found that ``. . . heavy controls invariably accompany subsidies, particularly over teacher salaries and qualifications, price, and other entrance criteria.'' She looked particularly closely at Australia, and found ``. . . increasing regulation and centralization of decisions and the loss of private school autonomy . . . '' I raise all of these points to appeal to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I do not talk to hear myself talk, but to urge serious consideration. We have House colleagues reconsidering. We have the Catholic Conference urging civil rights protections. We have Bush Administration and World Bank studies indicating heavy regulation. We have a proposal that clearly disadvantages public schools on the matter of federal funding. Who will really be happy if we pass this? Mr. President, we must finally remember our duty to public education. I go back to Horace Mann, the great champion of public schools. He said that The idea of an educational system that was at once both universal, free and available to all the people, rich and poor alike, was revolutionary. This is the great thing about America. No other nation ever had such an institution. . . . The free public school system . . . has been in large measure the secret of America's success. The proposal before us erodes public education. It disadvantages public schools in federal funding and under federal regulation. Instead, it offers more funds to private schools which should exist as an independent alternative, but which are not ``universal, free'' or ``available to all the people.'' I urge my colleagues who have supported this private voucher idea to reconsider over the holidays, and I thank the President in advance for his veto.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today to bring to my colleagues' attention the games being played by the majority regarding needed reforms at the IRS. On one hand, the people want IRS reform, and only the Senate stands in the way. The House overwhelmingly passed an IRS reform bill, 426 to 4, and the President is waiting to sign it into law. But the Senate leadership says ``no way, we can't begin fixing the IRS we have to get home for the holidays.'' So the taxpayer will have to wait for needed reforms making the IRS more user friendly. This means changes aimed at helping the American taxpayer deal with the IRS will be unnecessarily delayed and taxpayers will see little change in the IRS. Instead of a new IRS oversight board bringing new and more taxpayer friendly services, Americans who are dutifully paying their taxes will see the same old IRS--business as usual. Instead of permitting taxpayers to recover up to $100,000 for negligent collection actions, the taxpayers will continue to fight an uphill and seemingly impossible battle when challenging an IRS ruling. We all were appalled by some of the IRS practices recently highlighted in Congressional hearings and we all agree there is no place in government for these abuses, yet when given the chance to begin to remedy them, the Senate Leadership refuses to act. As a cosponsor and supporter of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights and the Taxpayer Bill of Rights II that provided for increased taxpayer protection, I urge the Senate to take the next much needed step and pass the Internal Revenue Service Improvement Act. In my mind it is outrageous that at the same time we have the Senate refusing to act on the IRS Improvement Act, the majority is attempting to spend $100 million of taxpayer's money to conduct a poll to find if U.S. taxpayers like the IRS. I can't imagine what new information this will provide. We all know that most Americans don't like the IRS. We all know it is government's most disliked agency. Spending $100 million to determine whether people like it seems a huge waste of money. This is nothing more than the Republican Majority using hard earned taxpayer dollars for their self-serving political theatrics. Why not make taxpayers give the Majority $100 million dollars worth of stamps and copying machines to run their 1998 election campaign. Does the Leadership really need to spend an extra $100 million to find out that most Americans don't like paying taxes. This is the most outrageous and hypocritical use of taxpayer funds that I have seen in my forty years in politics. Yes, there have been other abuses and scams defrauding the American taxpayer, but none more blatantly political and painfully obvious. If we want to add $100 million in federal spending why use it for partisan political purposes to prove what we all already know. Instead let us use this $100 million for real government such as constructing 1,325 additional federal prison beds or incarcerating 4000 more federal prisoners. Or maybe we could add 725 new border patrol agents or enroll 20,000 more children in headstart. We could also add 55,300 new summer jobs or train 27,600 low income adults. I am sure most of my colleagues hear a constant cry back home for more spending to improve roads and highways, certainly South Carolina could use $100 million for roads. As I understand, $100 million would resurface 670 miles of highway. At a time of mounting transportation needs, spending federal funds for an IRS poll seems ridiculous. Mr President, let me conclude by stating the obvious. Spending $100 million of taxpayer money on an IRS poll does not help a single taxpayer. In short, it is a huge waste of money. If we want to assist taxpayers, if we want real reform, we should pass the IRS Reform bill now. I urge the Majority Leader to free the IRS Reform bill, let the Senate vote and begin providing relief to the American taxpayer.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise today in support of S. 738, the Amtrak Reform and Revitalization Act of 1997, and urge its immediate passage. S. 738 is the final product of a long collaborative process between Democrats and Republicans alike who have come together in a bipartisan way in order to save and strengthen Amtrak, the Nation's passenger rail carrier. Credit must be given to Senator Hutchison, the subcommittee chairman, Senator McCain, our Commerce Committee chairman, and the majority leader, Senator Lott who took a personal interest in this legislation to get it done. On my side of the aisle we must acknowledge the contributions of Senators Kerry, Breaux, and Ford who negotiated this compromise. In addition, we should mention those Senate staff members who worked long hours to bring this legislation to the floor today. They include: Ann Begeman and Charlotte Casey from the Commerce Committee majority staff; Amy Henderson and Larry DiRita from Senator Hutchison's staff; Carl Biersack of the majority leader's office. On the Democratic side I want to mention: Ivan Schlager, Jim Drewry, Clyde Hart, and Carl Bentzel from the committee staff; Gregg Rothschild from Senator Kerry's office; Mark Ashby from Senator Breaux's staff; Greg Rohde from Senator Dorgan's office; Tom Zoeller from Senator Ford's office; and Jonathan Adelstein of the minority leader's office. This bill gives Amtrak the tools it says it needs to survive and prosper into the 21st century. In order for this to be done, each of Amtrak's stakeholders has had to give up some benefit. Amtrak passengers will have to bear a limit on Amtrak's liability to them, much the same way that the airlines limit their liability to passengers. Amtrak employees will have labor protections trimmed, but they will retain the ability to renegotiate these protections in the collective bargaining process. In addition, Amtrak management will be under increased scrutiny to perform. The bill establishes an Amtrak Reform Council to advise Amtrak management and to report to the Congress on Amtrak's progress to self-sufficiency. However, in return for those sacrifices, the bill provides Amtrak, for perhaps the first time, sufficient funds for it to repair and revitalize its track and facilities to grow into a first-class rail passenger service. The United States ranks very low in the world in the amount of money it spends on rail passenger service. According to one study the United States ranks below Bangladesh in the amount of money we allocate to this service. With this bill we can begin to close that gap and give the American people a service they can use and be proud of.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. I yield.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I thank our distinguished colleague for continuing along with the very thought that the Senator from Maryland provokes here which is so important to this particular debate, the fact that we should realize the arithmetic of import jobs as well as export jobs. The cumulative sum total, that 1975, 22 years, is right at $1.90 trillion. Now, they like to use 20,000 jobs created for every $1 billion in exports. The Department of Commerce changed that to 14,000 some 2 years ago and that has been their figure. Using the same figure--because I want to refer specifically here to the special study the Presidential Commission on the United States Pacific Trade and Investment Policy recently released its final report and it stated ``from 1979 to 1994, twice as many high-paying jobs in the United States economy were lost to imports as were gained from exports.'' Now, using the arithmetic of $1 billion equals 20,000 jobs, that would be some 38 million jobs that were lost over that time period, or using the lower figure of 14,000, it would be some 27 million lost jobs. Yes, we can talk that the economy is up and going but you get right to the point of understanding why we have 2.8 percent unemployment in Greenville County but 14 percent unemployment in Williamsburg County, and the people back home understand this trade problem better than many on the floor of the national Congress. They continue to see 6,375 jobs leave. Levi Strauss fired one-third of their employees, 11 plants in 5 States making jeans. Where have they gone? They are going offshore. They have been transferring them offshore, and after they let them go, they have to announce, as they do under the plants closing notice--they never announce it during the middle of the debate on the House side, but the lawyers had to comply with the plant closing notice. That is what is happening. We are getting Honda, I am getting BMW in South Carolina, I have Hoffmann-La Roche. I appreciate it and I am working hard, but I am looking at the basic jobs here paying $7 an hour. As I was pointing out with the Oneida plant they are closing in Andrews, and they have some 487 workers, the average age is 47 years old. Washington tells them, ``Retrain, retrain, retrain.'' Well, tomorrow morning, say we have 487 skilled computer operators. Are you going to hire the 47- year-old skilled computer operator or the 21-year-old? You are not taking on the health costs and the retirement costs for the 47-year- old, so this little rural town is high and dry. They understand at home that we are losing out. We are making great gains, but all this downsizing and everything else like that has stagnated wages in our economy. In that sense, we are going out of business. We have been giving away the store. We have Senators running around here, ``If we are going to continue to lead''--we are not leading, my dear Senator. We are not leading in this thing. I wish they would have adopted Adam Smith and free markets but they have adopted Friedrich List, that the strength of a nation is measured not by what it can consume but by what it can produce. We have to have the economic strength if we are to be a world leader. That is what we are losing. That is what is at stake. That is what is in the conversation here. These colleagues that come and say the President can't get at the table--come on. He has been at the table in 200 agreements.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. HOLLINGS. I really appreciate the distinguished Senator bringing the issue into sharp, sharp focus. It so happens that I had been looking at the Investor's Business Daily. Just reading a sentence: The surge in imports prompted economists to revise down their first-quarter growth statistics. And, again, just here in Business Week, dated November 3, on page 32: Because of the widening in the August trade deficit for goods and services to $10.4 billion, from $10 billion in July, trade is likely to have subtracted a full percentage point from overall demand growth. The distinguished Senator has chaired the Joint Economic Committee for years and understands this. That is why we are losing our own growth. We are trying to invest, trying to bring about economic growth, but not looking at the import side, as the distinguished Senator has so clearly brought to the attention of all the colleagues here, that we actually should be growing much faster, and saving, excepting these cancerous deficits in the balance of trade. I really appreciate the Senator from Maryland, and I apologize for interrupting, but I hope he will continue.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, right to the point, with respect to how you make your agreements and the charge now that this is not a referendum on NAFTA and Mexico, at the time NAFTA came up with respect to Mexico--I had voted for the free-trade agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada, because we had similar economies: individual rights, appeal processes, open markets, those kinds of things, and a revered judiciary. I will never forget that my colleague from New York, the distinguished senior Senator, Senator Moynihan, said, ``How can you have free trade when you don't even have free elections?'' Well, we look to the European experience. The Europeans found out that the free-trade approach did not work. They taxed themselves $5 billion to build up the entities of a free market in Greece and Portugal before they admitted Greece and Portugal into the Common Market, and they did just exactly that. Instead, we were told, no, Mexico was a prototype, said the Secretary of the Treasury and the Vice President of the United States. We went pell-mell headlong, and everything they contended has gone awry the other way. They said that Mexican wages would be up. They have gone from $1 an hour down to 70 cents an hour. The American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City says that 60 million Mexicans are living in poverty, and 25 Mexicans make as much as 25 million Mexicans. They said that we would have a plus balance of trade. Instead we went from the plus balance to a negative balance. They said immigration would be better. It is worse now. They said drugs would be better. It has gotten worse. Just look at the morning Washington Post. You could go right on down. Everything they said happened the other way. As a result, we never have really built up the entities of a free market like, for example, we have in Chile. I said 4 years ago I would be glad to vote for a free-trade agreement with Chile. They have a revered judiciary, they do have free-market rights. They have labor rights, they have rights of appeal. So there it is. When they say NAFTA referendum, yes, it is. There is no education in the second kick of a mule, Mr. President. We understand when they gave us that fast track on it that we were getting in trouble. But they wouldn't listen. Now is the time to stop, look, and listen, and deliberate and consider the agreement itself and not fall for this parliamentary booby trap of the White House just opening up the bazaar and selling off line-item vetoes over on the House side as fast as they can trying to change that CBI vote they got on last evening over in the House of Representatives. So the bazaar is open. They are trying to buy off the votes. They are amending while we are talking about having hopefully the right to amend. I yield the floor.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I yield now to our distinguished colleague from Maryland the remaining time that I have.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. HOLLINGS. Yes.

Mr. HOLLINGS. You go right to the point. In Shanghai, General Motors agreed not only to build a plant there in order to produce and sell cars in the People's Republic of China, but more particularly, to design the most modern computer equipment that is going to Shanghai, as we speak, to design the automobiles. They have taken it out of Detroit and are putting it into downtown Shanghai so all our brain power and our wonderful technology is being exported like gangbusters, and they talk about us leading and the President can't get at the table. Come on, they have to get with the program here and understand that as Senators and Congressmen we have a responsibility with respect to this economy, and the work force that is the highest, most productive in the entire world. You can go over to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, economic section of the United Nations, and No. 1 for the last 20 years has been the United States, not Japan. Japan is down there at No. 6 or 7 now. So our workers have been the most productive. Who hasn't produced, Senator, is you and I up here. That is what I am trying to get over to our fellow Senators so they will understand the problem we are confronting.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I yield.

Mr. HOLLINGS. And that is not leading. That is not leadership. You and I as Senators are concerned with the economic strength of the United States, with the work force and otherwise. We want to get back where we are leading. The people should understand global competition, ``You ignorant Senators, you protectionists.'' They better understand when China orders $3 billion they order one-half for themselves and from countries like Japan that make the electronics. That Boeing 777, they make the tail section--they don't give you the order unless you put the manufacturing facility in country. I know, I had a GE turbine plant when I was Governor. Brazil told them they would not order those turbines unless, they put the plants down in Brazil. So the GE plant at Gadsden, SC, has closed down and gone to Brazil. We are speaking from actual experience. It is not any fanciful conjuncture here about leading and not being at the table. Yesterday, Senator, right in the Committee of Commerce, we passed the shipbuilding agreement, the OECD shipbuilding agreement that has been negotiated with some 13 countries in Europe and in the Pacific, and we did that without fast track. We had an international telecommunications treaty earlier this year, with 123 countries, without fast track. What we are trying to do is get them to have a chance to stop, look, listen, debate the things like we did with the most important arms treaty, SALT I, and the intermediate missile treaty. All of those were without fast track but they act as if our poor President is not allowed to come to the table. He is at the table. We want him at the table. But we just want to have a chance to look and see before we vote.

Mr. HOLLINGS. I will never forget the second inauguration of Ronald Wilson Reagan. It was in the rotunda, and you and I were there, Senator. President Reagan said, ``I solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.'' We have the armies who protect us from enemies from without, and the FBI protects us from enemies within. We have Social Security to protect us from the ravages of old age. We have Medicare to protect us from ill health. We have clean air and clean water to protect our environment. We have safe working places and safe machinery. Our fundamental duties here are to protect. Be invited, if you please, to the Council of Foreign Relations, run for President of the trilateral commission. They asked, ``Are you a protectionist, Senator?'' I had to say, ``Yes, the truth of it is, I believe that is my fundamental responsibility here.'' They say, ``If you are a protectionist, you are not enlightened, you can't see the world and understand competition.'' When you are losing your shirt, as the Senator from Maryland said--through 22 years of negative trade balances--all they want to talk about is the exports and not the negative side of the equation. I cited on yesterday our experience with President Kennedy and the extreme action that he took when 10 percent of domestic consumption of textiles, clothing, was represented in imports, and he thought it was a crisis, and he put in his seven-point practice. Now two-thirds of the clothing within the sight of my debate here this afternoon is imported, 83 percent of the shoes, 53 percent of the ferroalloys, 59 percent of the cooking and kitchenware, 64 percent of the mineral processing machinery, 61.4 percent of the machine tools for metal forming, and 44.1 percent of nonmetal working machine tools--you can go right on down the list. There is the majority of automatic data processing machines, diodes, electrical capacitors and resistors. That is at 70 percent right now. I remember having the capacitor plant of GE, and I have lost it now. It has gone overseas. You have 100 percent of tape recorders, tape players, VCR's, and CD players. You can go right on down. I remember that we could not engage in Desert Storm, the gulf war, unless we got the displays from Japan. That is why I had to put the ``buy America first'' provision for ball bearings in the defense bill. We are fighting a rear guard action so that we would be able to defend the country, much less be economically strong. The NAFTA tent is being pitched on the front lawn of the White House, and the corporate jets are descending on National Airport offloading the Nation's top-paid CEO's to lobby for the administration's effort to renew fast-track trade authority. Of course it is no longer referred to as fast track. Instead the administration has offered a clumsy euphemism--normal trade authority--to obscure the fact that the sole purpose of fast-track is to stifle debate by subverting the Congress' constitutional obligation to regulate foreign commerce. Yet there is nothing normal about a $100 billion plus trade deficit, nothing normal about Congress abandoning its constitutional responsibilities, nothing normal about stagnant wages and an erosion of our manufacturing base. The administration argues that they need fast-track authority because no one will negotiate with the United States unless they have fast track. A more likely scenario is that the administration would prefer that Congress not review a legacy of poor trade deals; eroding manufacturing strength and a trade policy that puts the interests of the multinational corporation before working-class Americans. While the administration embraces the Fortune 500's agenda, it has turned a cold shoulder to those who have been left behind by globalization, the working men and women of this country. The end of the cold war has created a seismic shift in the global economy. The American worker has now been thrown into bare knuckle competition against the new entrants to the global economy: countries whose productive and motivated work force will accept much less than our workers. As globalization has increased world trade, the American worker has faced an all out assault on their wages, benefits, and overall standard of living. Instead of engaging in a debate on the impact of this changed world, our trade policy remains a prisoner to a cold war mentality, treating trade as a stepchild to foreign policy, continuing to serve up unilateral concession after unilateral concession in the hope that our trading partners will be converted by the persuasiveness of our elegant economic models and focusing exclusively on export statistics, failing to consider the impact of imports or even the nature of the exports themselves. Rather than facing this new era of fierce economic competition with the hard edge realism that places the national interest in our own hands, we will be relying on multilateral institutions like the WTO to protect our national interest. Now we will be asked to embark upon a course which is bound to produce asymmetrical market openings and in which the people, through their elected representatives, will be shut out. The sad truth, however, is that it is impossible to have an honest debate about trade policy, the trade deficit, or the erosion of our manufacturing sector. Instead of focusing on the present and future, pictures of Smoot and Hawley will be dusted off and put on display. The proponents of fast track will unleash a barrage of hyperbolic rhetoric declaring an end to civilization as we know it if we fail to pass fast track.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. ``Since as Adam Smith pointed out, the consumer comes first.'' Come on, that is historically inaccurate. If we would have done that, we would still be a colony. He doesn't know what he is talking about. They didn't land here from the Mayflower looking for consumption and a cheap T-shirt. They came here to build a nation. You don't build it without a strong manufacturing capacity and you can find more silly articles running around loose. There is one by David Broder. He was quoted by my distinguished colleagues from New York and from North Dakota on both sides of the issue, but I want to read one paragraph, and I ask unanimous consent this article be printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. The article reads in part: Clinton aides blame the problem on organized labor which has led the fight against fast track just as it did against NAFTA. ``This is the most blatant example of the corrupting effect of campaign finances on Washington policy-making I know,'' one high administration official said. Boy, oh boy, is it. Is it one of the most scandalous, corrupting effects of campaign finances. Why? Mr. President, 250 of these multinational corporations are responsible for 80 percent of the exports. That is the moneyed crowd that came with the white tent on the lawn for NAFTA. That is the moneyed crowd and the Business Advisory Council that sent around a month ago, ``We are allocating $50,000 for this debate.'' Each of your corporate entities, send the money in so we can buy the TV to bamboozle those silly Senators in Congress. It is one of the most corrupting--not labor. God bless labor. At least they are fighting for what Henry Ford said: ``I want to make sure that the man that produces the car can buy the car.'' And he brought in good, responsible wages. That is what labor is trying to get--a responsible wage and working conditions and no child labor and no environmental degradations. Since I'm talking, I want everyone to know I'm just not reading things. I have been there and I have seen, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, the other side. So at Tijuana, Mr. President, you go there and you think you are in Korea. Go across from San Diego into Tijuana-- beautiful industries, mostly Korean, and what happens? Then you go out to the living conditions, some 150,000 to 200,000 people in that dust bowl. The mayor comes up and he says, ``Senator, I want you to meet with 12 people if you don't mind.'' I said I would be glad to. ``I would like you to listen to what they are talking about.'' It so happens that in that area, the mills have the flag, whether American or Korean, they have a beautiful lawn, a nice, clean factory on the outside and the living conditions are squalid--literally, five garage doors put together as a hovel to live in, no running water, the electric power is one little electric line where I was visiting and the fellow had a car battery to turn on his TV because if he turned on the light and TV everything blew up. There wasn't any sewage, there weren't any roads or streets. When they had a heavy rain and when the rains came at the turn of the year, it washed down all that mud, dust and what have you, and their homes were literally being washed away. Trying to save them, they missed a day's work, these 12 workers. Later in February, one of the workers in a plastic coat hanger factory--a factory that had moved down from Los Angeles, CA, to Mexico, a low-wage thing, maquiladora is the word for it--had lost his eyesight from the dust flicked up in his eyes by the coat hangers. That caused real concern because they had been docked having missed 1 day's work. They were docked under the work rules. They lost 4 days' pay. And now they were losing one of their companion workers and his eyesight, and around the first of May the most popular supervisor was expecting childbirth and she went to the front office and said, ``I'm feeling badly and I have to go home this afternoon,'' and the plant managers said, ``Oh, no, you are not, you are working out there,'' and she stayed that afternoon and miscarried. So these 12 that the mayor had me meet said they were going to get a union and they went up to Los Angeles. You know what they found, Mr. President? These are labor rights they have down in Mexico. They found they already had a union. When the plants had moved down there 3 years before they had signed a legal document back there in Los Angeles between lawyers for the so-called union that they never saw, never saw. The union master or anything else of that kind never visited the plant, and under Mexican law, since they had a union, these workers were fired because you are not allowed to try to organize a union when you have one. That is labor rights in Mexico. So they lost their jobs. And the mayor was pointing them out to me. Labor is there working so that the United States can go out and spread its values. I talked about our values as a Nation, the strength of them, and it isn't to get a cheap T-shirt or cheap production. It is to extend those rights. We had the highest standard of living here in the United States, and we are trying to extend that standard of living so that others can buy and purchase. If we had the time, Mr. President, I would go into overcapacity. I remember when Bill Greider published his book a couple of years ago, ``One World, Ready or Not.'' He talked about overcapacity; at the time, commentators ridiculed Greider, but now they find that we in the United States have the capacity to produce 500,000 more cars than we can sell; in the European sector, they have the capacity to produce 4 to 5 million more cars than they can sell, and with the yen down, you can watch automobiles coming in here like gangbusters. Now, what are we saying? They don't know what they are talking about. We are trying to produce consumers to go and buy those cars. And what did we get out of NAFTA? Instead of $1 an hour workers' wages have gone down. Read the American Chamber of Commerce report in Mexico earlier this year. Instead of $1 an hour they now make 70 cents an hour. They can't buy the car. There are no consumers there; that is why there is the overcapacity. They act like we have equals; they say in a naive fashion that 96 percent of the consumers are outside the United States, when all that they are doing is looking at population figures. They don't know what they are talking about. They are not consuming. They are not able. I wish I had the Boston Globe article about the shoe manufacturer. I don't want to mention the name because I want to be accurate. But the tennis shoes were being made by three young women who slept on the floor, without a window, in a shack down in Malaysia, and their monthly salary was less than the cost of one pair of the shoes they were making. Now, come on. These are facts we must bring out in this debate. Wait a minute here, we know how to compete, how to open up markets. Via Friedrich List, we have been trying for 50 years to get into Japan and we have had little success. If you want to sell textile products, you have to go to the textile industry of Korea and get permission or you don't get it. In Europe, the VCR's shipped there--there are nontariff trade barriers. They put VCR's up in Dijon, France. It took a year to get up there and clear all the redtape, get them released from the warehouse. Automobiles stayed on the dock in Europe--Toyota--and are still there. If you want to buy a 1998 model, you are going to have to wait until October 1, 1998, not October 1, 1997, because the '98 models that just came out, they have a year to inspect. The competition, Mr. President, out there in this global economy is the Friedrich List model, not the Adam Smith model. We just need to get that through the hard heads of the State Department and the White House and the leadership in this Congress. Labor is being derided because they are trying to bring the benefits to all so they can become consumers, so, yes, as a result all will be able to purchase these products. But we are roaring blindly into an overcapacity problem the world around and the global economy, and we are headed for deflation. Remember that we said it first here in the beginning of November in 1997. Mr. President, I have the article I was mentioning earlier. It was Reebok. My staff has just given that to me. We have learned the hard way. We know our responsibility. That is what really boils me. Here comes this crowd from the White House: ``Give the President the authority, give him the authority.'' He has had the authority to negotiate since 1934 under the Reciprocal Trade Act. We delegated that negotiating authority on behalf of the Congress. I am reminded of my friend Congressman Mendel Rivers, who used to be chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He had a seal in front of his desk that said ``Congress of the United States.'' When Secretary McNamara would come up, Chairman Rivers would lean over and say to Robert McNamara, ``Not the President, not the Supreme Court, but the Congress of the United States shall raise and support armies,'' article I, section 8. Also in article I, section 8 it says ``the Congress of the United States shall regulate foreign commerce,'' not the President, not the Supreme Court, but the Congress of the United States. That is not only our authority, it is our responsibility. But they say: Fast track, fast track, fast track. Forget your responsibility constitutionally. Take it or leave it. How do they get NAFTA passed? The White House amends the treaty. Mr. President, in that particular debate, we remembered there were some 16 amendments. One Congressman down in Texas got 2 additional C-17's and he gave in his vote. Another distinguished Congressman, my good friend Jake Pickle, got a trade center. Another group down in Florida got a citrus amendment to take care of their concerns, and the Louisiana vote was taken care of with sugar, and for the Midwest, up by the border, it was a Durum wheat amendment. I could go down the list of the 16 amendments. What I am saying to this body is that we, the Congress, can't amend the treaties, but the White House can. It is the most arrogant, unconstitutional assault and usurpation. Said George Washington in his farewell address, if in the opinion of the people the distribution of powers under the Constitution be in any particular wrong, ``then let it be amendable in the way that the Congress designates, for in the usurpation may in the one instance be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.'' And so we are in the hands of the Philistines, the multinationals. As I started out saying, the program of spreading capitalism has worked. That is what defeated the Soviet Union and brought about the fall of the wall. We all glory in it. But in the meantime, those who had gone abroad spreading that subsidized initiative learned that they could produce cheaper overseas, that they could save one-third of their sales of volume cost. So they began moving overseas their offshore production. And then the banks financing this movement--Chase Manhattan and Citicorp, as of the year 1973--I remember that debate--made a majority of their profits outside of the United States. IBM is no longer an American company. They have a majority of workers outside of the United States. We could go down the list. But they had the banks and then the nationals were becoming multinationals. Then they had all the consultants and the think tanks that they financed to grind out all these papers. They come around babbling, ``free trade, free trade.'' So you have the multinationals, the banks, the consultants, the think tanks, the college campuses--oh, yes, and the retailers. Every time we debated the textile bill--five times we passed it--I would go down to Herman's and find a catcher's mitt, one made in Michigan and one made in Korea, both for $43, the same price. We went down to Bloomingdale's and got a ladies' blouse made in Taiwan and one made in New Jersey, both for $27. My point was that they get their imports, bring it in for the large profit, and only give a little bit of the overrun of the particular sales to Grand Rapids in New Jersey. They are not lowering their price as a result of competition. The retailers put out all of this nonsense about Smoot- Hawley. Paul Krugman said the best of the best--we had some quotes from him. We had that debate. I will ask, Mr. President, to have printed in the Record the quote with respect to Smoot-Hawley because we heard that same thing here a little earlier today. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point the record on Smoot-Hawley made by our distinguished colleague, the late Senator John Heinz, in 1983, where he made a studied report of it.

Mr. HOLLINGS. No.

Mr. HOLLINGS. No.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, my time is limited. It is unfortunate we have forced cloture. We have had no debate. This is an arrogant procedure: on a Friday afternoon, late on Friday when everyone was gone, they put in the so-called bill with the cloture motion, and now the world's most deliberative body is not going to have a chance in the world to deliberate. We had no debate on Monday, and now after forcing a vote on Tuesday they say, ``All right. You've got an hour.'' Oh, isn't that fine. Isn't that polite? Isn't that courteous? Isn't it Senatorial? Not at all. Not at all. What we really need is an extended debate on the most important item that faces this country--our economic security. Today we practically are out of business in manufacturing. People talk about the manufacturing jobs that have been created, but 10 years ago we had 26 percent of our work force in manufacturing. We are down to 13 percent of jobs now in manufacturing. I go right to one of our adversaries, who is one of the finest industrialists in the history of man, Akio Morita of Sony Corp. And on a seminar in the early 1980's, in Chicago, we were talking about the developing Third World countries. And he said, ``Oh, no. They cannot become a nation state until they develop a strong manufacturing capacity.'' And later on in that seminar he pointed to me and said, ``By the way, Senator, that world power that loses its capacity of manufacturing will cease to be a world power.'' We are going to have Veterans Day here very shortly. And I think back to my the 3-year jaunt overseas in World War II and the invasion of North Africa, and Corsica, and Southern France. And I remember well how valiant our fighting men were. And I take pride in average citizens from the main streets and farms of America volunteering to fight and die for our Nation. In those days, when we looked up at the skies we saw our wonderful Air Force. And we saw them bombing the adversary into smithereens, to the point where they had no productive industrial manufacturing capacity. We, in contrast, were turning out five B-29's a day at the Marietta plant just outside of Atlanta. They were not turning out any planes at all. Their plants had been destroyed. And so we had a superiority of equipment and everything else as we moved forward through Alsace and across the Rhine. And as much as congratulating all the veterans on Veterans Day, I will be making talks like other politicians. I want to emulate Rosy the Riveter who, back home, kept things going. It was the wonderful productive capacity of the United States of America that kept this world free. Let us never forget it. So when we talk of trade, we are talking of something of historic proportions here. I will go to the history here in the unlimited time because in a few hours--in an hour and a half, to be exact--the Commerce Committee, with the Capitol Historical Society, will celebrate the 181st anniversary of the Committee of Commerce, Space, Science, and Transportation. That brings us back to our earliest days and the mistaken idea that there is somewhere, somehow, other than here in the United States, free trade, free trade, free trade, free trade. There is absolutely no free trade in the world. Trade is reciprocal and competitive. The word ``trade'' itself means something for something. If it is something for nothing, it is a gift. I know some people talk about different subsidies and different nontariff trade barriers, and that is what they mean. But what has come about, as we have been setting the example by just that, with free trade with Chile, our average tariff was 2 percent. The average tariff in Chile is 11 percent. So the people in Chile now almost have free trade. We have almost nothing left to swap in order to bring them to terms to open their markets. As long as we cry and moan and grown, ``free trade, free trade,'' like the arrogant nonsense that somehow our way is the only way, we are going to wake up in America like the United Kingdom. They told Great Britain at the end of World War II, ``Don't worry, instead of a nation of brawn, you're going to be a nation of brains. And instead of producing products, you're going to provide services. And instead of creating wealth, you're going to handle it and be a financial center.'' And England has gone to hell in an economic handbasket; downtown London is an amusement park. Poor Great Britain: it is not great any longer. And that is the road that we are on here in the United States. I want to get off that road and sober these folks up and let them stop, look, and listen to what they are talking about. I would like, Mr. President, to emphasize what the global competition is. Some act as if it's something new, and we have just come into it. No. We started 220-some years ago, in the earliest days of our republic. Thinking today about this particular celebration we are going to have this evening, I realized that in 1816, when the Commerce Committee was first started, it was started as the Committee of Commerce and Manufacturing. Commerce and Manufacturing was the name of it. That was foremost in the minds of the Founding Fathers when they thought about our relations with Great Britain, the mother country, once we had won our freedom and were a fledgling colony. The British wanted to trade with us under the doctrine of competitive advantage. They said at that particular time that what you ought to do back in the colony is trade with what you can produce best and we will trade back with the little fledgling colony from the United Kingdom what we produce best--free trade, free trade, Adam Smith, Adam Smith, free trade, consumption. Well, Alexander Hamilton wrote ``Report on Manufactures,'' and there is one copy left that I know of over at the Library of Congress under lock and key. I won't read it--I would if we had extended time where we can debate this and begin to understand the Founding Members. In a line in that booklet, Alexander Hamilton told Great Britain essentially, bug off, we are not going to remain your colony. The second act ever enacted by Congress--which had a mindset of competition and building, rather than buying votes with consumption and tax cuts and free trade and all that kind of nonsense--passed a tariff of 50 percent on some 60 articles, which included textiles, iron, and just about everything else. What we said was ``no, thank you.'' We are going to follow Friedrich List, who said that the strength of a nation is measured not by what it can consume but rather by what it can produce. And the Founders said that they we going to produce our own industrial backbone, beginning with tariffs and instituting a Committee of Commerce and Manufactures. This mindset continued through President Lincoln. His advisors told the President during the construction of the transcontinental railroad, ``Mr. President, we ought to get that steel cheap from England.'' And he said ``No, we are going to build the steel mill, and when we get through we not only will we have the transcontinental railroad but we will have a steel capacity to make the weapons of war and the tools of agriculture.'' And in the darkest days of the Depression we passed price supports for America's agriculture which this Senate supports. It is not like we are against the farmer. I have had the pleasure of being elected six times, and each time the farm vote has either put me over the top or saved me. I have been elected six times. I have the greatest respect and we had not only the price supports but protective quotas, import quotas. Eisenhower, in 1955, put in oil import quotas so we could build up our own capacity of oil production. So we have been practicing that until we have been overcome, so to speak, with the multinational singsong. You see the policy of building up capitalism the world around has worked. I was with the manufacturers in the early 1950's. They hated to fly all the way to the Far East and come back. But after a while they found out they could produce cheaper by producing overseas. We had this testimony and we had the hearing before the Finance Committee which is a procedure of parliamentary fix. We had hearings that proved that 30 percent of the cost of manufacturing is in labor and you can save as much as 20 percent of your labor costs by moving offshore to a low-wage country. In other words, if you have a volume or sales of $500 million, you can keep your headquarters and sales force here but move your production overseas and save tens of millions of pretax dollars; or you can continue to stay home and work your own work force and go bankrupt. That is the jobs policy of this Congress. That is the jobs policy of this fast track. That is the jobs policy of President Clinton and his administration. That is why I am so strongly opposed to this kind of nonsense. They come around here with talking about consulting and retraining and everything else of that kind but the truth of the matter is, I will take them down to Andrews or some other towns in my State of South Carolina. We have lost, since NAFTA, some 23,500 jobs when counted last May and over 25,000 jobs easily since then. Go to where they make simple T-shirts, in Andrews, SC, where they had 487 workers. The age average is 47 years. And let's do it Washington's way, let's retrain the 487 workers so tomorrow morning they are all computer operators. Are you going to hire the 47-year-old computer operator or the 21-year-old computer operator? You are not going to take on the health care costs, the retirement costs of the 47-year-old. Andrews is drying up. They are gone with all this retraining. We don't need retraining. I have the best training facilities. That is how I get Hoffmann-La Roche, BMW and all the sophisticated plants, Honda and otherwise, that are coming into my State. So we say with knowledge that we are not against trade; we have experience in this field. In South Carolina, we have the best industries on the one hand, 2.8 percent unemployment in Greenville County. But go down to Williamsburg County and you have 14 percent unemployment. On October 28, one week ago, the Washington Post published an editorial by James Glassman. Obviously, Mr. Glassman does not understanding exactly what is at issue here. I ask unanimous consent to have the article printed in the Record.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, in the trial of a case, when you present a witness such as a doctor or an engineer, you qualify the witness by providing his background and experience. I am in the same position of having to qualify myself--not that I am expert on any particular thing--because only yesterday in a discussion on the floor, one of my esteemed colleagues said, ``I know how you are going to vote with respect to fast track because you are against trade.'' Mr. President, nothing could be further from the truth. Let me say at the very beginning that I was raised and still live in a port city. I worked in that port two summers, paying my way through college with a coastal geodetic survey before World War II, when we were laying submarine nets in the harbor. I also was a lawyer later on in life, practicing before the U.S. Customs Court with the Honorable Judge Paul Rayall of New York. As an attorney, I also represented the South Carolina Port Authority. So I am familiar with the field of trade law. Later, as Governor of South Carolina, I had the privilege of putting in all the expanded facilities for our State ports, such as grain elevators for our farmers so that they could compete, but more particularly. During my tenure as Governor, I also was one of the first elected representatives to take trips abroad to promote trade and to encourage foreign companies to open plants in the United States. I was just thinking the other day, when the President was going for the first time to Latin America, that I took that trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina, back in 1960. I have been there a half dozen times since then. And I have been not just to Sao Paulo but to the port of Santos in Brazil and to Caracas, where we buy now a majority of our oil. I learned early on in looking for trade opportunities that my hometown of Charleston is 350 miles closer to Caracas, Venezuela, and the Latin American markets than New Orleans. Look at it sometimes--the offset of the South American continent--and you will see that my hometown of Charleston is about on the same latitude as the Panama Canal. So I went after trade and have been working on trade for at least 40 years, as an attorney and as Governor. Today, my office in Charleston is in the Customs House. I have participated in the various trade debates in my 30 years in the U.S. Senate. I have heard the same things come up time and time again without any understanding of the fact that we do not have a trade policy. We have a foreign policy. A friend who says you are against trade and he is for foreign aid is not for trade. We were fat, rich, and happy after World War II, and, yes, we taxed ourselves to the tune of what would be equal to some $80 billion in today's amounts. We couldn't even get taxes to pay our own bills, much less the vanquished enemy in Europe and in the Pacific, but we taxed ourselves and we sent over not just the best expertise to tell them how to develop industrially, but more particularly, Mr. President, the best machinery. I have always heard people talk about textile fellows. According to critics, we want subsidies and protectionism. Now, we have asked for enforcement of and protection under U.S. international trade agreements, but we never have asked for subsidies like the airline manufacturers receive, for example. And of course, much of our technology comes from Defense. Then we make sure that it is financed under the Export-Import Bank. And incidentally, the $3 billion contract with China, you might as well count on only a percentage of that--China is in part trading with itself, because it has Boeing China where they make the tail assemblies, and they make the electronic parts in Japan, and everything else of that kind, so we can look at really where the contract is being sourced. Unfortunately, Mr. President, we are exporting our most precious technology. General Motors, for example, has agreed not only to produce cars in the People's Republic of China, but also China has required, Mr. President, that they design the automobiles. So the new cars that we in America will be buying here at the turn of the century will be designed in downtown Shanghai with the finest computerization and machinery being installed there now by American companies. So we watch this particular trend. And we understand that the administration and those championing fast track are totally off-base with respect to the welfare of the United States of America, with respect to the security of the United States of America. Mr. President, the Nation's security rests on a three-legged stool. The three legs comprise our defense, values, and economy. And we have the one leg that is military power, which is unquestioned. Our troops and our military technologies are without equal in the world today. This leg is sound. The second leg is that of our Nation's values. This leg, too, is sound, our values unquestioned. We commit ourselves to freedom, democracy, and individual rights the world around--from Haiti and Bosnia. We work hard in all the councils of the world to promote the health and welfare of the free world. Our commitment to democracy and human rights is unwavering and our democratic values still are strong, as was noted here just last week on the visitation of Jiang Zemin. But, Mr. President, the third leg of our Nation's security--and this must be emphasized--is the economic leg. Unfortunately, the economic leg has been fractured over the last 50 years, somewhat in an intentional manner. I mentioned the Marshall plan. I mentioned the expertise we supplied to our vanquished foes. I mentioned the attempt to build up freedom and capitalism around the world, continuing today with the fall of the wall in Europe and the capitalistic trends even in People's Republic of China. And we have succeeded in this policy, so we do not regret it. But too often over the last 50 years we have given in to our competitors. When 10 percent of U.S. textile consumption was provided by imports, President John F. Kennedy declared an emergency, and under the law he appointed a cabinet commission. And he had the Secretaries of Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor and State meet. In May, 1961, complying with national security provisions, they determined that before President Kennedy could move, he was required to find that the particular commodity was important to our national security. At the Department of Defense, this particular commission found that next to steel, textiles were the commodity most important to our national security. After all, our Government could not send our soldiers to war in a Japanese-made uniform. So President Kennedy took action and formulated a 7-point program with respect to textiles. But this program has never been enforced. I continue to say that if we were to go back to our dumping laws and enforce them, we wouldn't have to have a debate of this kind on the floor of the U.S. Senate. But they are not enforced, Mr. President, and now two-thirds of the clothing worn here on the floor of the U.S. Senate is imported. And 86 percent of the shoes are imported. While I am on this subject, Mr. President, we have gradually gone out of the role of a productive United States of America to a become a consuming people. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a ratio of imports to domestic consumption of various items.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, the crash occurred October 29, and Smoot-Hawley passed June 19, 8 months later. It didn't cause any crash. It didn't have any affect on the economy. Neither President Hoover nor President Roosevelt had any particular concern with it, because it was less than 2 percent, a little over 1 percent of GNP. Trade now is 18 percent of the GDP. But it was less than 2 percent at that particular time, and two-thirds of the trade was duty free. The two-thirds duty free was affected the same as the Smoot-Hawley tariff type trade. While in the year 1933, under reciprocal free trade, reciprocity, we came back with a plus balance of trade. So we have to listen to these things about we are going to start a domino effect with Smoot-Hawley again coming in. I can tell you that right now, I would be glad to debate Smoot-Hawley at any particular time. Well I just read the book called ``Agents of Influence.'' This takes place 7 or 8 years ago. The gentlemen was a Vice President of TRW and he lost his job because he wrote the truth. He said one country, Japan, had over 100 law firms, consultant firms in Washington representing itself, at the cost of $113 million. The consummate salary of the 100 Senators and 435 House Members is only $73 million. The people of Japan, by way of pay, are better represented in Washington than the people of America. When are we going to wake up? I have been sitting on the Commerce Committee for 30 years and I see the front office fill up on every kind of trade matter that comes about. Why? Because the multinationals. Now, by gosh, not just 41 percent, but the majority, let's say over 50 percent of what they are producing has been manufactured offshore and brought back in. So if they are going to lead the cheer ``free trade, free trade, Japan, Korea, People's Republic of China, right on, brother, you lead the way, we will follow you.'' Do you blame the People's Republic of China for not agreeing to anything? I have to note one agreement. Oh, boy, it turned everybody upside down in this town 2 weeks ago. We had an agreement with Japan relative to our maritime services, and our ships would go into the ports of Tokyo and the other ports in Japan. And they had finally came around agreeing to the same privileges that we grant them, the stevedores. They actually handle the goods and so forth. The Japanese ship that comes into Charleston can have its own stevedore, but the American ships going in to Japan could not, up until this time. And we have been trying for years--and they have all kinds of controls over us in shipping that are absolutely burdensome. They agreed--Japan and the United States--in April. At that particular time in April, when they agreed, we sat down and said, fine, let's go with it. They passed four deadlines, in June, July, August and September. Every time we added a drop-dead date, when are you going to do it? Oh, we are going to do it. So we stopped the ships coming in. You know what happened? My phone rang off. The 100 lawyers, the ports authority lawyers, the lobbyists--Christmas wasn't going to happen, children weren't going to get any toys, the world was going to end, but we had one distinguished gentlemen with his maritime commission, Hal Creel, the chairman, who I want to praise this afternoon. He held his guns. The State Department later came in, and I will credit Stuart Eizenstat with sticking up for the United States. But it was many times that they came before we got them finally to agree. So, we stuck to the guns, and who was on our side? The shipping industry of Japan, because organized crime had taken over, in many instances, in these ports. And they, the shipping industry in Japan, had been trying to do something, too. It wasn't until we stopped veritably the Japanese ship from coming into the American harbor that they finally sat down and got to the table. The White House was calling: Give in, give in. Oh, this is going to be a hard incident. This is going to be terrible. Chicken Little, the sky is falling, we are going to start a trade war and everything else of that kind. Mr. Creel stuck to his guns. That is what I am talking about on trade. That is the global competition. The other day former Majority Leader Dole wrote an op-ed regarding fast track. Don't give me Bob Dole writing the thing is a fact. The distinguished gentleman should put under there that he represents the Chilean salmon industry. Don't give me our good friend, Jay Berman. Everyone knows he lost out for the recording industry on the last two agreements. He said, I'm not going to lose out, I am going to be the President's handler, I am going to handle the Congress for the White House. We are in the hands of the Philistines. The country is going down the tubes and all they are doing is the rich folks are hollering, give the President authority. He has the authority, but give me my constitutional duty of doing just exactly what we did. Come on, we have had, as the Senator from North Dakota said, in 221 years hundreds of trade agreements. We had one this morning in committee. It was an OECD shipbuilding trade agreement that we approved between 16 nations at the Commerce Committee just today, without fast track. We negotiated the telecommunications agreement, an international agreement with 123 countries, without fast track. I better stop. I don't know that I have any time left. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished body for yielding me this time. I hope I have some time left here, because we have plenty more to debate to wake up this country and start competing. There is nothing wrong with the industrial worker of the United States. He is the most competitive, the most productive in the world. Look at any of the figures. What is not producing and not competitive is the Government here in Washington. It has to stop. I yield the floor. I reserve the remainder of my time. Privilege Of The Floor

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise today in support of S. 1231 as reported by the Commerce Committee. This bill would reauthorize the programs of the U.S. Fire Administration [USFA]. As I stated when we introduced this bill, it is a tragic statistic that the United States currently has one of the worst fire records of any country in the industrial world with more than 2 million fires reported in the United States every year. Even more tragic is the fact that these fires result in over 4,500 deaths, 30,000 civilian injuries, and billions property losses. The USFA has done a tremendous job since its creation in 1974, pursuant to the recommendation of the National Commission on Fire and Control, in reducing deaths and damage caused by fires. This bill before the Senate today will allow the USFA to continue assisting our Nation's 1.2 million member fire service in doing their job, efficiently and safely, with the best technology available. Mr. President, the fire service is one of the most hazardous professions in the country. Firefighters not only confront daily the dangers of fire; they also are required to respond to other natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, medical emergencies, and hazardous materials spills. Finally, we are all well aware of the recent rise in arson activities in this country. Arsonists are responsible for over 500,000 fires every year. Arson is the No. 1 cause of all fires, and is the second leading cause of fire deaths in residences. The USFA has initiated several measures to combat this weapon of hatred, including: community grants in high risk areas to hire part- time law enforcement officers, and to pay for law enforcement overtime and other church arson prevention activities; National Fire Academy training courses; additional training and education for arson investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; arson prevention information for the general public; and juvenile arson prevention workshops. This bill allows these efforts to continue. Mr. President, we owe our support to this Nation's 1.2 million firefighters who risk their lives every day to save the lives and property of others. By passing this bill, the USFA can continue providing the education, data analysis, training, and technology needed to enable these brave individuals to do their job as efficiently and safely as possible. This bill ensures that both firefighters and the USFA get the financial resources they need to serve the public. I encourage my colleagues to support passage of S. 1231.

Mr. HOLLINGS

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize a man who exemplifies the American dream. Dr. Robert McNamara, an assistant professor of sociology at Furman University, rose from a childhood of Dickensian poverty and violence to become a successful writer, prodigious researcher, and beloved teacher. In addition to devoting much time to instructing and advising his students, he has published nine books; his most recent, ``Beating the Odds: Crime, Poverty, and Life in the Inner City,'' has just been released. In ``Beating the Odds,'' Dr. McNamara addresses some of our society's fundamental problems while relating them to the trials of his own impoverished childhood. Though it is unusual for an academic to intertwine memoir with analysis, Dr. McNamara's style makes his book all the more compelling. Bob McNamara was born in New Haven, CT, in 1960, the youngest of four boys. He and his family--``dirty, unkempt, and unruly''--lived a tenuous existence in a squalid section of the city. His abusive and alcoholic father was a compulsive gambler. McNamara's parents divorced when he was 10 years old. Neither wanted to raise him; after a time, they began paying other people to care for him. As an adolescent, Bob McNamara was sent to live with 19 different families. His abuse and exploitation at the hands of these so-called foster parents convinced him that ``being a foster child is one of the most frightening things that could ever happen to a young person.'' It was not until one of his high school football coaches realized his potential and decided to become his foster parent that McNamara gained a stable and nurturing home. With the help of supportive teachers and his new foster family, Bob McNamara turned his life around. He worked two jobs to pay for classes at the local community college. After succeeding there, he enrolled in the State university and commuted 60 miles each way to attend classes. He made outstanding grades and won a scholarship to Yale University, where he obtained his doctorate. While at Yale, he met another graduate student, Kristie Maher, whom he would later marry and who also teaches sociology at Furman University. Dr. Robert McNamara is a living example of the promise of American life. He was born into an abysmally poor and dysfunctional family, with no role models or guidance. He spent much of his childhood stealing for food and running with gangs. But he found purpose in the pursuit of knowledge and nurturing from his teachers, and went on to excell at one of America's elite universities. Today, he is an admired teacher and respected scholar. Mr. President, ``Beating the Odds'' is not just the title of Prof. Robert McNamara's latest and most inspiring book; it is the story of his life. In fact, beating the odds is what the American dream is all about.