Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank my dear colleague the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) who has brought us together this evening to discuss the pending vote on CAFTA, godchild of NAFTA, and my dear friend the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell) who has been such a leader on all economic concerns that face our country, and indeed they are daunting, this one among them. As I listened to the gentleman from New Jersey and the gentleman from Ohio discuss this pending CAFTA vote, I could not help but think NAFTA. In a bullet, 1 million lost jobs for our country, of jobs all over this country, Ohio, New Jersey, California, Oregon. The list goes on and on. I think Ross Perot talked about the great sucking sound 10 years ago, and we certainly have seen that. This is going to be the last few inches left in the tub, are going to go down to Central America now on this continent. I usually talk about the economic dimension of NAFTA and CAFTA, but tonight for just a brief moment I wanted to talk a little bit about the political issues involved, most importantly freedom. If America's goal really is to export products, that is a good secondary goal. The first goal ought to be exporting freedom and finding a way to make sure that any agreement that we enter into advances the cause of freedom globally. If we look at NAFTA as a model of what happened economically, this chart very clearly demonstrates every single year since NAFTA's signing, we have moved into greater and greater job loss and greater movement of the deficit with Mexico as well as Canada. So it is negative; negative, negative, negative in exponential proportions. This is just an example in the automotive industry post-NAFTA. We had many more cars coming into our country from Mexico than exports going out. So it is pretty clear what it did economically. But politically, we ask ourselves, will CAFTA support growing democracy in Central America? Will we export freedom first? Do we consider trade more important than freedom? This agreement is going to undermine democracy in our neighboring Central American countries. Central America without question faces serious challenges in the consolidation of democracy and the protection of human rights. Peace accords in some of the countries that the gentleman from New Jersey and the gentleman from Ohio have been talking about tonight, peace accords in El Salvador and Guatemala and the end of the Contra war in Nicaragua signaled the beginning of a hopeful era for Central America, but the implementation of reforms there has been incomplete, and many democratic institutions remain weak. Increasing political violence, in Guatemala in particular, is a grave reminder that the conflict of previous decades has not been laid to rest. Just last week in another country, as high school and college students in El Salvador protested an increase in bus fare, Salvadoran riot police attacked the protesters, seriously injuring and detaining high school students. Riot police followed students as they retreated inside the gates of the university, setting off bombs of tear gas at them and opening fire on the students with what they claim were safe bullets. Four high school students were hospitalized, and others were arrested. To even try to freely assemble in these countries is met with great resistance. Still, civil society in Central America struggles to gain voice, and hundreds of thousands of small farmers, workers, women and young people have gathered in these countries to protest this CAFTA agreement as not contributing to the advancement of freedom in those nations. In recent months, there have been 10 significant protests in Guatemala. You have to be very courageous to demonstrate there. Thirteen in El Salvador. Twelve protests in Honduras. Six protests in Nicaragua. Seven in Costa Rica. They have ranged in attendance from 10,000 to 250,000 people. The people of these countries are saying: United States, pay attention. This agreement will not help us. Hear our voices. Still, their voices are ignored by their own legislatures. They are doing this in order to try to get our attention. CAFTA passed under very undemocratic procedures in Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador; with an early morning surprise vote in Honduras, we had parliamentarians from Honduras who just came here and told us that; and an emergency session in the Congress in Guatemala because, if they had considered it under regular order, it simply would not have passed. The public would have come into those chambers. They would have stood around the buildings and made their voices heard. Not only does CAFTA do nothing to promote democracy among our neighbors, but in fact, it undermines democratic processes here at home. For example, CAFTA's chapter 10 undermines our ability to uphold our living standards because, under this proposed agreement, corporations have the right to sue a government directly if they feel their ability to earn a profit has been undermined, for example, by a public health law or regulation. Is safe drinking water not important? Not having streams polluted, is that not important? CAFTA's chapter 10, which is modeled on NAFTA's investor right provisions, goes way beyond the rights granted to U.S. companies in the law. Under NAFTA's rules, indirect expropriation and loss of future profits constitute grounds for a NAFTA case. These rules have been reproduced in CAFTA, and they threaten a wide array of legitimate public health and environmental protections. Under NAFTA's investor provisions, several attacks have already been made on our democratically passed laws. For example, and I will just go through two of these, a Canadian gold mining company under NAFTA recently sued the United States to escape the cleanup and reclamation of a mine site in the United States, claiming this would have interfered with the Canadian company's profits. Well, too bad. Why should they leave behind squalor in this country or any other one? Another example, a Canadian company challenged California's right to ban the gasoline additive MTBE. California banned that ingredient because it leaks from underground gasoline storage tanks and polluted drinking and surface water throughout that water-short State. The Canadian company, Methanex, sued California for almost $1 billion because, they said, their profits were allegedly harmed by California's MTBE ban. Now, what sense does that make? Do we not have a social compact here? Do we not have the right to protect people and under freedom's institutions make sure that our laws reflect that? CAFTA aims to constrain local and national procurement laws that could otherwise address off-shoring, which I know my colleagues are concerned about, or promote economies that serve our communities, promoting living wage jobs and healthy ecosystems. What is wrong with that? In closing my opening remarks today, I guess I would have to say, what is next? What will be left of our democracy here at home after more trade agreements like CAFTA? What kind of model are we exporting, where freedom is shortchanged, where profits are given the green light? We should only have free trade among free people. We should use trade as a lever to raise living standards, and we should place freedom first. It is truly a joy to be with my colleagues here this evening and to try to fight in freedom's cause.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman so effectively raises the issues of sovereignty and of protecting our legal system based on a rule of law with individual rights embedded in those very deeply, and I wanted to thank him for his constant leadership, as well as the gentleman from Ohio's (Mr. Brown) leadership in this whole anti-CAFTA effort, and say that, in addition to the sovereignty issue, following on something the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) said, I think one also has to look at the morality of what is being done here, and his reference to the religious leaders that are coming here from Central America this week, certainly I think of the Roman Catholic Guatemalan cardinal and his tremendous letter that he wrote. But according to Christian teaching, we remember the words: ``As you do unto them, the least of my brethren, so you do unto me.'' And we, as the most powerful Nation in the world, have to think about the impact of what we are doing as a country on the least among us not just at home but abroad. And without question, as the gentleman from Ohio has stated, the net income and the earning power of those in these Central American countries, in El Salvador, Guatemala, we put them all together, they are so poor. They are so low income. Our predilection should be to have a preference for the poor, that, in fact, we should make it no worse than they already have it. And we can see the women who are working in those banana packing houses who earn pennies a day, bitten by spiders, and they are told to pack 40 boxes; no, pack 50 boxes an hour; no, pack 100; no, pack 200, until they wear out, and then there is another person lined up. They have no rights. And how about in the places that sew clothing? Those are largely women workers. They have no voice. They earn pennies. It takes them 2 weeks of work to even afford one pair of the trousers they make that are sold in this country for $39. What is right about that? What about those people? Are we not to think about them as well? Yes, those jobs were lost in South Carolina or Mississippi, or they moved somewhere from this country, and we fought that with these unfair trade advantages that some of these multinationals have. Now, what this is doing is it is putting a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on a system that we know is so exploitative. It is bad for our people and horrendous for those doing the work in these packing sheds and these hot, dusty textile companies that no one will ever see. I remember hearing a letter written by one woman working in a company that was headed by a South Korean who was making the women work faster and faster and faster and faster with no rights. That is where our country was 70 years ago, and we got rid of that kind of sweatshop condition, or at least we got the laws on the books to allow people to have some dignity in their work. We should not be giving any Good Housekeeping Stamp of Approval to a system which will approve that kind of sweatshop labor that is going down in Central America, which this will exacerbate. We should listen to the people, listen to those who are demonstrating, listen to those traveling here, listen to their religious leaders and using our power, which is our marketplace. They all want to take their stuff in here. So let us lift standards elsewhere as a condition of market entry, and let us make sure, by raising living standards, we do not keep washing out jobs in this country more and more.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey for so effectively raising that issue this evening because I do not think the public fully understands who can take whom to court and how our basic legal rights are undermined through the NAFTA agreement and the CAFTA agreement. We basically abdicate that to these bodies that have no transparency. They have no regular right for an individual citizen, for example, to take a claim. We end up with big corporations taking the laws of the State of New York to court or the United States of America to court. I mentioned the instance where a Canadian company, a company, challenged California as a State their right to ban MTBE from their gasoline because it was polluting their water, of which they have a limited amount.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from Ohio would continue to yield, I think what the gentleman from New Jersey said is absolutely accurate, and they expect that through the institutions that are set up, these NAFTA tribunals or CAFTA tribunals or TWO or they meet in places that most people had never heard of. Right? Davos, who can get there? Do people want to go to a meeting somewhere on the west coast of Mexico around Cancun or whatever that was? The roads are blocked off. They tried to pass something here on GATT. When did they do it? In a lame duck session after midnight. In these countries, by special session, early in the morning, late at night, and the people in those societies even have less opportunity to try to impact the legislative process, as I have spoken about this evening. So we have surrendered, we have surrendered to the largest, most powerful private corporations on the face of the Earth: oil companies, automotive companies, electrical companies, and agricultural companies, people that need cheap labor whether it is to make clothing or whether it is to pick sugar beets, whatever it is. What we have done is we have let that big bulldozer ride over all of us. And here we stand in the citadel of freedom this evening and we say to ourselves, is this the best we can do? Is this the best we can do, a Nation that rebuilt Europe after the Second World War, a Nation that worked for 50 years to see the collapse of the Soviet regime? Is this the best we can do in the modern age in the 21st century?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the gentleman for his passion and for placing the net result of the architecture of NAFTA and all succeeding agreements that follow in its path like this proposed CAFTA because what we see is a system, an economic system, that is really very cruel, foisted upon societies that do not have the legal system nor the financial system nor the political systems to really allow the voices of the people to be heard in their chambers of government. In Mexico, after people's wages were cut by 40 percent, the value of their buying power down by 40 percent post-NAFTA, nearly 2 million people in the countryside thrown off their land, what happened there, they got so angry, there have been protests in Mexico City of a million people. A million people. That is three times as many people as live in the major city that I represent. They could not have their voices heard any other way. There was a group of farmers that got on their horses from the different states in northern Mexico and central Mexico. They literally rode into the parliament to try to say stop it, this is hurting us too much. That is about all they can do to make their voices heard unless they can change over their government. They come here and say to us, America, do you not realize what you are doing to us, whom you are in partnership with? They are begging us to help them improve their societies. Do we not have the greatness as a Nation that believes in freedom and the liberty for all people that we would use our powers, political, economic, moral, whatever they might be, to help these poor people? What is wrong with us? We have been hurt ourselves greatly by our jobs moving to Mexico and other places. We know how tough it is.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, June 28, 2005, our community lost a great jurist, advocate and true friend with the passing of Roger R. Weiher. At 79 years young, he unexpectedly passed from this life. An Army Air Corps veteran of World War II, Roger Weiher was raised in North Toledo and graduated from Woodward High School. He received undergraduate degrees from Western Michigan and John Carroll Universities, and earned his law degree back home at the University of Toledo. In addition to his law practice, Roger also served as Lucas County deputy clerk of courts and Ohio assistant attorney general. He began his judicial tenure with an appointment to Toledo Municipal Court in 1989 and was later elected to the position. Following a decade of service, Judge Weiher continued as a visiting judge even after retirement. His even-tempered, soft and patient nature made him a good judge and, as one of his colleagues noted, ``He understood people. That's what made him so effective on that court.'' Expecting to remain active following mandatory retirement from visiting judge duties at age 80, Judge Weiher planned next month to begin training as a mediator. His wife explained, ``He wasn't going to put his feet up.'' Roger was not only a fine public servant and respected attorney, but together with his first wife Evelyn Weiher, with whom he raised their son Tommy, he was well known in the theatre world. Evelyn was an actress, director, and teacher in the theatre, and when they settled back in Toledo the two established a theatre company in the 1960s which staged productions in the former State Theatre. Later productions were staged at Adrian's Croswell Opera House. Evelyn passed away following illness in 1983, yet Roger's passion for performing continued. Just last month he participated in his 49th consecutive Gridiron show, an annual event of the Toledo Junior Bar Association. His wife Norma brought new joy into his life, and they were married in 1985. Always at his side, Norma was his true and faithful companion. She was with him even as he breathed his last from this life and entered into the next. We extend our heartfelt condolences to Norma, Thomas, stepdaughter Linda, brother Donald, and grandchildren. May the brightly burning light that was Roger Weiher in life remain in their hearts, giving them comfort for the journey ahead, and offering them peace in remembering the man who was husband, father, brother, grandpa, mentor, friend, and a man imbued with the spirit of justice borne of his faith and the rule of law.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Kilpatrick) for yielding 3 minutes to me and wish to rise in support of the resolution, but also to compliment the gentlewoman from Michigan for successfully passing an amendment this afternoon that stopped this merger by claim with Unocal from going through. That is in the base bill that we were debating for the entire day. This resolution is helpful. It gives us a sense of the Congress that the U.S. does not want to lose her strategic energy edge. But this July 4th weekend, it is important for America to think about our independence, indeed, our diminishing independence due to imported petroleum. It is the largest share of our trade deficit with the world; 63 percent of what fuels this economy has to be imported. Yes, America has lost her independence, and under this President, it is 7 percent worse than it was before he took office now, with the cost of a barrel of oil over $60 and gas at the pump $2.50 and rising all over this Nation. So what are the Chinese trying to do? They are trying to trump our strategic edge over in Afghanistan now, because the Unocal pipeline running through Afghanistan has all that natural gas just ready to flow, but it is right on the border of China. So China has been very smart with the money she has earned off this market. She is buying pieces of us or what some claim to be ``U.S. companies,'' but in actuality they have their assets spread all over the world. It's no secret we have pumped ourselves dry except for what is left up in Alaska. And so we ask ourselves what is going on here? What is going on here is America is losing her independence, starting with petroleum. The Chinese need petroleum too. What America needs is energy independence here at home and the sooner we realize that, the fewer resolutions we would need to try to interfere with the free market. But you know what? We do not have any more choice, because we expect we will be 75 percent dependent on petroleum if this Congress does not trump this President of the United States and produce a real energy bill that will put us on the road to true energy independence. We need new biofuels, new energy from fuel cells, from hydrogen, from solar, from renewables, from all kinds of new energy sources that should be tapped and built in this country. Meanwhile, we sort of have to limp our way across the finish line on this July 4th celebration and admit America is losing her energy edge around the world. We should not be dependent. We should not have to kneel down in front of the Chinese, the Communist Chinese, vegetarians as Mr. Watt referenced, or anyone else. We should become energy independent here at home. This resolution points us in the only direction open to us now. The gentlewoman from Michigan's amendment earlier in the day hit a real home run in blocking the merger. We compliment her for her excellent work.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the people of the Buckeye State of Ohio send their sympathies to the Noah Harris family as well and pray for him and pray for his relatives and pray for all of those who have lost loved ones on the American side, on the Iraqi side, and those who are in theater this evening. Mr. Speaker, I wish to dedicate my remarks this evening to CAFTA because the Bush administration cannot get the votes in this Congress, apparently, to expand NAFTA to Central America; and so they are now resorting to a number of myths in order to try to sell hard in these closing days. And one of the myths that they are talking about is jobs, and there was an ad in one of the newspapers up here on Capitol Hill today about blue jeans. And it is paid for by the very companies that are outsourcing our jobs and shipping them out to other places like Central America. And the ad gives us a really interesting choice on blue jeans. It basically says, do you want your blue jeans manufactured in the Dominican Republic, or do you want them manufactured somewhere in Asia? My answer is I would like them manufactured in the United States of America where they used to be, in New York City, in Lower Manhattan, in North Carolina, in South Carolina, in Mississippi where people would like to be making the very products that we buy. Interesting they do not even give the choice of manufacturing in the United States of America. That pretty much tells the whole story because workers in Central America make pennies, literally pennies. Largely women are sewing those jeans, and I have met some of them. They have to work 2 weeks, because their wages are so low, to afford one pair of jeans. And they make 400 to 600 pairs of jeans a day. Think about that. Think about who makes the profits off their sweat when you go to buy a pair of jeans. In El Salvador and Nicaragua, two of the countries where they want to outsource more of our jobs, women workers can be fired for trying to stand up and get a contract to earn a decent wage, to be able to work for something more than starvation wages, which is what they termed what they work for. They are intimidated in the workplace. In Guatemala and Honduras there are fines for anti-union discrimination, and you know what? Courts do not enforce them. Gosh. Does that shock us in Guatemala? In Costa Rica company unions, that means the one who runs the company or owns the company, replace really legitimate independent unions. The business roundtable who paid for this ad, and it is not cheap to put an ad in this paper, really ought to tell us how to create jobs in America, in the United States of America. Now, a second myth is labor rights. In fact, Ambassador Portman, the new trade ambassador, says expanding these trade agreements to Central America would provide the workers down there with the best labor standards of any trade agreements we have negotiated, except for one thing: he is totally wrong. The truth is that the current trade system we have in place with the Caribbean countries allows our government to rescind trade benefits. It has real power for any country that is falling short in its labor commitments. The labor provisions in CAFTA by contrast have no teeth. So Ambassador Portman says, you know what, maybe they do not have any teeth, though I do not admit that publicly, but I will put some U.S. taxpayer dollars on the table, $40 million, and we are going to try to give them to those countries in hopes that they will enforce their laws. Of course he does not say we are already giving over $50 million to all of those countries right now and they are not enforcing their labor agreements. They never have. Despite the current labor laws, all of the international reports show real enforcement of their laws do not exist. So why should we pass an agreement that undermines the Caribbean Basin Initiative Standards that helps to raise standards of living rather than lower them? Finally, democracy. That is the other myth. If we just pass this CAFTA, why the people down there they will have more democracy. In fact, Ambassador Zoellick has said that. But you know what? The record shows in these countries when there is this kind of deregulation, the neo-liberal model, what you get is more people being put out of work. NAFTA cut wages in Mexico; NAFTA has created over 2 million people who were pushed off their farms who come here as illegal immigrants, people who are not treated with respect on this continent. That is not the way to build friendships. You know what? In every one of those countries down there, in three of them no agreement has been passed; and in the other three, the agreement was ramrodded through in a very undemocratic way. We ought to begin democratically to treat our friends in Central America with the same kind of respect we demand of people here in the United States. It is time to turn back CAFTA, renegotiate it, and start building a middle-class standard of living on this continent again.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Michigan. It is greatly appreciated. Amendment Offered by Mr. LaTourette

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I would like to engage in a colloquy with the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg). Mr. Chairman, the worst construction accident in Federal transportation history in the city of Toledo, Ohio, took place on February 16, 2004 on the $200 million I-280 Maumee River Crossing Bridge, affecting serious loss of life. Crushed to death on the job, as a launching gantry crane collapsed, were Mike Phillips, age 42; Arden Clark, age 47; Mike Moreau, age 30; and Robert Lipinski, Jr., age 44. As I mentioned before, all iron workers. There were injuries sustained by many other workers. Since that time, the Lucas County prosecutor has been investigating the accidents to determine if there may be criminal liability in these deaths. The prosecutor's office has been working with the Inspector General of the Department of Transportation, but has needs that go beyond the assistance that the Inspector General can provide. The prosecutor needs technical assistance in determining answers to engineering and other special issues. One might expect that such expertise resides within the Department of Transportation, perhaps specifically at the Federal Highway Administration. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman from Michigan (Chairman Knollenberg) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Ranking Minority Member Olver) be willing to work with me to determine what resources may be available throughout DOT, including the Federal Highway Administration, to provide technical expertise in the ongoing investigation and to ensure that such assistance is provided to the Lucas County prosecutor? Additionally, if such assistance is not available directly from the Department, would the chairman work with us to determine if the Department can provide assistance to the Lucas County prosecutor in the hiring of appropriate outside experts?

Ms. KAPTUR. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, some people have loosely thrown the word ``freedom'' around here tonight. Well, America's freedom is declining because we are so increasingly dependent on imported petroleum. As oil prices rise, for super it is over $2.50 a gallon now at the pump and historic levels of $60 a barrel, I must rise tonight to say how sick I am of imported petroleum governing this economy. Look what it has done to our beloved republic economically, politically, environmentally, strategically. Rising oil prices control this economy. The lack of growth, every time that price ticks up, the stock market becomes very uncomfortable. Oil prices keep us strategically locked to dictatorships all across this globe. That causes limitation in freedoms. What about the impact that oil prices have binding us to China and Iran now, looking at what is happening there, and the proposed Unocal purchase by China right at the ankles of Unocal's investments in Afghanistan right next door, as we become players in this 21st century oil market. America, wake up. Look at who gets the profit from your expenditures out of your wallet. Rising oil prices makes our economy vulnerable here at home. We lose more jobs, and the stock market remains very, very unsteady. Rising oil prices mean we knock points off economic growth. Think about who gets those profits off those rising prices as our young men and women in the armed forces occupy the Middle East and Central Asia where most of our imported oil comes from. Now, over 60 percent of what we consume is imported from abroad; a majority of what is used in this country is imported. We are not free. In fact, our soldiers are guarding more and more every day oil and gas pipelines from Afghanistan to Georgia to Turkey to places most Americans have not been very familiar with. U.S. foreign policy and military involvements in these areas parallel that of our global oil corporations. Unocal is not the only one. Chevron, Exxon, Arco, the names go on. Now, this week, the Communist-owned oil company of China has decided it wants to pay more for Unocal than it is worth. Unocal does not drill anything in this country anymore; their investments are all over the world. Remember, Afghanistan was a key transit route before we got there with the military, the 18,000 of our soldiers who are stationed there now; Afghanistan was a key transit route from Unocal from the Caspian Sea Basin. They have been at this a long time. Sadly, U.S. foreign policy in that country has mirrored Unocal's satisfaction with the Taliban government there. They tried to be friends. In fact, Unocal had plans for a new pipeline winding a far-ranging path from Turkmenistan's gas fields to the Arabian Sea. The giant oil company built cooperative relationships with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, as did the United States Government. When we supported the Taliban, as recently as 1999, U.S. taxpayers paid the salary of oil- hungry Taliban government officials. Ask yourself about that. But as soon as the Taliban began making things a little difficult for Unocal, demanding more money for infrastructure and access to some of the oil themselves in the summer of 2001, well, our government's position began to change on the Taliban. Shortly thereafter, the Taliban became much more vulnerable after the September 11 attack, and the Bush administration was able to secure support for invasion of that country, but then maneuvered a former Unocal consultant named Khalized to be the first ambassador to Afghanistan and, guess what? Now he was just nominated and confirmed as ambassador to Iraq. Strange coincidence. Ask yourself, who gets the profits off the rising gas prices you are paying for. China has raised its bid to purchase the U.S. oil giant Unocal, and what a twist of fate this is. It was U.S. oil dependency that drew us to secure Central Asia for oil, and now we find ourselves in the awkward position of having China buy us out. China is trying to trump our energy investments in that area because it is right next door to them, trying to buy Unocal to access what the U.S. had hoped to gain by the Central Asian invasion. China is also courting favor with Iran. They are trying to trump us there to gain an energy edge as the Bush administration creates more barriers with Iran. Ask yourselves, who is getting the profits and why has the Bush administration made us more dependent on foreign oil, up another 10 percent, up to 63 percent now. Mr. Speaker, America is losing her independence.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this important time, and we have all observed with awe the marvelous photos of construction workers sitting on I-beams swinging high above New York City as we admire their bravery, their daring and their skill. These tradespeople built America, and I cannot think of a citizen in our country that does not respect their prowess. Well, the worst construction accident in Federal transportation history in the city of Toledo took place on February 16 last year, effecting serious loss of life and injuries among these modern soldiers of the sky. Crushed to death on the job were Mike Phillips, age 42; Arden Clark, age 47; Mike Moreau, age 30; and Robert Lipinski, Junior, age 44. There were injuries sustained by many other workers. Joe Blaze, the president of the Local Ironworkers observed: ``What happened will affect us for generations.'' The local paper reported, the Toledo Blade, ``Workers told investigators the crane's rear legs were held up with 14 inches of shims and no anchors, while each front leg had shims and only one of two anchors.'' These workers were crushed to death by a several-million-ton crane falling on them. I tried at the full committee level to place simple report language in this bill, merely asking the Department of Labor's Occupational Health and Safety Administration to gather all records relating to inspections, or the lack thereof, on this job and to also provide any communications that have occurred with the U.S. Justice Department related to this accident. This was denied to me by the Republican majority. I, along with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, were prepared to offer an amendment right here today to ask the Department of Labor to assist our county prosecutor in the investigation of this tragedy. This amendment is also being denied to me on a technicality rather than being discussed on its merits. OSHA's Midwest office had ruled there was willful negligence on this job, and for reasons not completely understood, they have changed that ruling to unclassified. So as the individual court cases move forth locally, somehow civil litigation will be affected by that change in words. Now, guess how much OSHA is able to fine the company and others responsible for this serious loss of life? $280,000. That is $70,000 for each lost life, and this money goes to the U.S. Treasury, not even to the victims' families. Well, there should be more than civil damages and OSHA's fines paid to these families. Our chief of police has bluntly stated these men were murdered. There is criminal wrongdoing here. My question is: Where was OSHA? Where was the State of Ohio on this, the largest Federal transportation project in Ohio history? Why is this Congress now denying me the ability to get a vote on this amendment which merely asks the Department of Labor to engage with our county prosecutor to investigate the real causes of those deaths? We have been now told OSHA has not developed a standard or promulgated a rule stating that foreign manufactured cranes, like this one, must equal or exceed U.S. safety standards. Recommendations for such a standard were made nearly a year ago, but it has not been acted upon. Why not? Why has this Congress not demanded and implemented as soon as possible these regs, or made meeting U.S. standards a condition of eligibility for Federal funding? There is a serious abdication of responsibility by the U.S. Department of Labor because this Congress has not held them to a higher standard. These men died, in my view, because of the apparent willful negligence of the U.S. Department of Labor and OSHA and their allies here in the Congress who have been cutting back on worker safety laws and who have abdicated their responsibility to conduct aggressive oversight. Today, it is likely that my amendment would have been ruled out of order, as my simple effort to get on the record information from the Department of Labor was denied to me as a Member of Congress, because the full committee would not even allow report language, a most unusual practice. Instead, today, I am left with a personal appeal to the Secretary of Labor to use her existing authority to provide assistance to the Lucas County prosecutor for the full prosecution of this case, wherever it may lead, and I ask that we all push for the swift implementation of construction crane safety standards so that no other family or community need endure the great tragedy that has befallen us in northwest Ohio on the largest Federal transportation project in our State's history. I want to thank the ranking member for yielding me this time and to state also I will place in the Record at this point as part of my remarks today a letter we are sending to U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao. House of Representatives, Washington, DC, June 24, 2005. Hon. Elaine L. Chao, Secretary, Department of Labor, Washington, DC. Dear Secretary Chao: The City of Toledo's police department and the Lucas County (Ohio) Prosecutor's office are attempting to carry out an exhaustive investigation into whether criminal charges should be filed regarding safety violations resulting in the deaths of four ironworkers on construction of the I-280 Maumee River Crossing in Toledo, Ohio. Madame Secretary, I ask that you use the authority you have to assist the Lucas County Prosecutor's office in their investigation. You have been provided the general authority to use the services of any State or political subdivision with reimbursement under section 7 (c) of the OSH Act. On February 16, 2004 our community was shocked by tragedy, when a two million-pound construction crane collapsed at the I-280 Maumee River Crossing construction site in Toledo, Ohio. The collapse resulted in the deaths of four Ironworkers. It is with great sadness and a deep sense of responsibility that I bring to your attention further details surrounding this accident and possible criminal wrongdoing by the firm responsible for the bridge's construction. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has fined the project's general contractor, Fru-Con, $280,000 for the incident. OSHA has said that Fru-Con committed ``willful'' safety violations prior to the crane's collapse. OSHA has said that Fru-Con committed ``willful'' safety violations only to reclassify them as ``unclassified,'' and the agency has also pulled out of a special safety ``partnership'' with Fru-Con, saying the firm didn't live up to the deal. An investigation of criminal wrongdoing on a project of this magnitude is an enormous task for any local agency. I believe that the Department of Labor can be of immeasurable assistance to the local entities in this pursuit. I look forward to your involvement and counsel. Sincerely, Marcy Kaptur, U.S. Representative. Amendment No. 11 Offered by Mr. Paul

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for saying that. Also, 60 percent of those people who are employed in these Central American countries are women. They are working in banana companies trying to pack these crates, 40, 50, 60 crates an hour. They are being forced to make men's trousers, 400 to 600 pairs an hour, and they have to work 2 weeks to afford 2 pairs of slacks down there, which costs $39.40, and yet, they are making 400 to 600 pairs of trousers an hour. What kind of a continent, what kind of a world are we creating when we pay so little heed to those who work so hard for so little and then we put our workers out, largely women workers in the textile industry in this country, where we farmed out those jobs in places like North Carolina, South Carolina, are hollowing out of this production? At least they were in the middle class. They had finally made it to the middle class. What are we doing in this country?

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman for his comments on that. I think the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr) is exactly right and he understands how one has to have integrated policies. I wanted to say as I am looking at the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) who has fought so hard for people to build a real middle class in this country and to help other nations help their people create a middle class, what is really sad about these trade agreements is it pits the poor against the more poor. It draws our living standards down. But one farmer that I met in Mexico said to me, what is really upsetting is that we feel like crabs in a bucket. Every time we try to get up a little bit, somebody else pulls us down, and they were fighting this rush to the bottom, which is the expression that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) uses so well. One poor person pulling another person down, rather than having the standards that the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr) is talking about, where we all agree to a minimum standard. We bring people up, not pull them down.

Ms. KAPTUR. I think the gentleman has raised an excellent point. I think the Washington trade groups are totally out of touch with their members at the local level. I have had farmers say to me when we were debating the NAFTA agreement, why should we let bell peppers come in from countries that do not have environmental regulations like we do? Bell peppers coming in with DDT, when DDT was being banned in Ohio. They were not competing on a level playing field. They were on a different field. They would go down to these towns. You cannot even call them towns. Little dusty villages in Mexico where these bell peppers were grown. And the farmers would say, I have been going down there for 20, 30 years. They do not even have an asphalt road yet. So the whole system of life was different, and they were being asked to compete with a country that really did not allow its farmers to earn more by virtue of the hard work that they did. They respect the people of Mexico, but they knew the system was rigged against them. They said, just give us a level playing field.

Ms. KAPTUR. I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), the author of a book on fair trade, and my colleagues, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr), for joining us this evening. I want to focus for a few minutes on the important issue of agriculture. And the new trade ambassador who happens to be from Ohio claims that our agricultural exports to Central America are going to increase by $1.5 billion, or almost double our exports, to the region as a result of CAFTA. But you know what, that is what they told us when we debated NAFTA. They said that we were going to increase agricultural exports. Let us look at the record. The record shows with Mexico we are dead even. It did not make any difference. And with Canada we have fallen over $4.3 billion into the hole. We were promised by the former trade ambassadors we would get more food-processing jobs, and that sounded like a good thing back in the early 1990s. They told us we would get 54,000 new food-processing jobs. Guess what? We did not get a single one. In fact, we lost 16,000 food- processing jobs in this country. Even Brachs Candy is locking up their doors in Chicago and moving south. Same thing in my district, Spangler's Candy. NAFTA boosters said to us, oh, farm cash receipts are going to go up by 3 percent a year. Guess what? They have gone down by that amount. And net farm income during the NAFTA period has gone down by nearly 10 percent from $52.7 billion to $47 billion. So NAFTA's legacy for farmers in America is declining prices, and they know it: shrinking revenues, shrinking markets, and rising debt burdens. And now the same people who gave us NAFTA want to give us CAFTA, the same group. And what did the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) say, if you keep making the same mistake over and over again, it is a sign of insanity. I agree with the gentleman 100 percent on that. In fact, the food consumption power of consumer markets in CAFTA countries is exaggerated. We already hold an $812 billion deficit in agricultural products with the CAFTA countries. Already we are in the hole. With NAFTA and Mexico, we were almost even. We were in debt a little bit with Canada, and it has gone completely south. We know CAFTA will mean more sugar imports into our country. We also know in one of the most important areas which hardly anybody has talked about, in ethanol production which is a brand-new market for our country. We have got about 54 ethanol plants in this country right now. A Corn Belt State like Ohio would benefit enormously from some of the new energy legislation we are working on in the Congress. But what CAFTA would do is, guess what, it would open up exports from Argentina and from Central American countries of ethanol-based products, including ethanol made from sugar into our market. So in the same ways we are becoming and have become totally addicted to imported petroleum, now we will get addicted to ethanol by imports through agreements like CAFTA, rather than finding a way to help our farmers bring those markets up in this country. Minnesota is really leading the way. I love the people of Minnesota, the farmers of Minnesota. I just wish I could do for America what they have done for Minnesota in the area of ethanol production. So when we look at this CAFTA agreement, and I know time is limited this evening, I just wanted to come down here and say if we had a decent renewable fuel standard that would require an 8 billion gallon reserve, what we could do for real farm income, not subsidy income, but real farm income in the entire Corn Belt region, in the sugar beet region of this country, in the cane sugar region, all these areas of our country where we could really make a difference. Wow, what we could do here at home. I just think CAFTA is a bad deal. I think we should learn from the past. And agricultural America knows it is a bad deal. The only people who are supporting this are some of the brokering companies. Whether they get their product in China or whether they get it in Argentina or in the United States, these transnationals, they really do not care. They just want to trade on the backs of those who are actually doing the work. We should care about the American people. We should care about the farmers in our fields. We should care about those people who are working in our processing companies and keep that production here.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Newark, New Jersey (Mr. Payne), for allowing me to speak this evening, yielding me time, and to thank my colleagues from New Jersey. I am respectful of the hour and will be brief. Let me say it is a great privilege this evening to rise to pay tribute to a legend, and a great honor to help to give word to the celebration of the life of Congressman Peter Rodino, a man whose commitment to the law, as others have said, is legendary, to civil rights, and to his deep-seated belief in the worthiness of every human life. He remains a living testament as we speak this evening. Many here in Washington, certainly the members of the Committee on the Judiciary and others, remember Peter Rodino as a gifted and effective lawmaker, an honorable, wise, and good man. Surely others have talked about his role on the Committee on the Judiciary during the impeachment proceedings when he approached that with utter fairness, resolve, and determination that upheld our Constitution and gave tribute to the American people that he was sent here to represent. But Peter Rodino was also a veteran of World War II and a member of America's Greatest Generation. He lived by the advice given to him by his father, Pellegrino Rodino, grateful for the help he received as a struggling immigrant, as all children of immigrants who serve in this Congress bring the special gifts of life that he bore as a Member. It made him strong. It gave him deep understanding. It equipped him, even probably more than his legal education, for the role that he assumed as chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. Congressman Rodino's father told his young son to always look out for those around him who were less fortunate; and throughout his 40 years in Congress, Peter Rodino did exactly that. He was a founding member of the Italian-American Congressional Delegation, and as the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) stated, people of ethnic heritage often face discrimination, and that was surely part of his lot in life. But he, along with many good friends, including Monsignor Gino Baroni, helped to found the National Italian-American Foundation in 1975, a prominent group of leaders from both the public and private sectors who formed the organization in hopes of bringing public attention to the specific Italian-American issues in the Nation's capital here and to provide an umbrella group for the Nation's significant Italian-American population, who wanted to share that immigrant experience and their struggle to be accepted as full Americans. I want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) for creating this time for us this evening to pay tribute to Congressman Rodino. He was a member of the National Italian-American Foundation Board of Directors from 1975 to 1988, was active in their events, and rightfully honored by them in 1988 with a Special Achievement Award in government. This talented man of humble origins upheld our Constitution during his tenure with honor, with kindness, and a sharp eye to the law. He was a man, as I recall him, with no pomp, but a lot of grace as he handled great circumstance. Tonight, I wish to offer, on behalf of the people of Ohio, to his wife, Joy, to their family, deepest sympathy and deepest gratitude for allowing this towering figure to give us a legacy for the Nation that lives. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) and thank him so very much for the opportunity to appear and for the courtesy of my colleagues from the committee and from the State of New Jersey for allowing me to speak this evening.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, many people do not think of trade agreements as an issue particular to women. But a briefing I held last week along with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis), and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman) made clear how disproportionately the proposed CAFTA agreement will negatively affect women. We tend to forget about women in forgotten places like the sweat shop zones in Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Costa Rica. But let me tell some of their stories. One worker, woman in Guatemala describes the way supervisors treat workers in the maquiladora, the sweat shop where she works. She says, ``Sometimes the supervisor grabs a piece of cloth you're working on and throws it in your face. Once when a supervisor did that to me, I finally grabbed the piece from him and threw it back in his face. I did not cry. If I had cried, I wouldn't have been able to answer him. Instead, I told him that he needed to start respecting the women that worked for him. I could have accepted it if he had just said the piece was no good, but to throw it in my face, I won't stand for that.'' How about the thousands of women who work in the banana packing plants? Who speaks for them? For the treatment that the woman in the textile company received, she earns $68 every 2 weeks including over time and bonuses, working many more than 8 hours a day. She goes on to say, ``The trousers we make cost about $39.50 each. In 2 weeks we earn enough to buy 2 pairs. But do you know how many pants we have to produce every day? Our quota is between 400 and 700 trousers per day.'' Another worker describes efforts to organize a union to represent women. She says, ``The company used to fire workers without any cause. They did not always pay the workers their full salaries and there were lots of other problems, so the secretary-general said it would be a good idea to place an injunction. That's when the company started to intimidate the workers. The situation got really bad . . . when someone shot at one girl while she was buying tortillas and hit her in the ear. From then on everyone was afraid and did not want to continue fighting'' for an organization to represent the women, an actual union. Last year, a U.S. union official organizing in El Salvador was killed. No independent trade unions have been registered there in 4 years. In Guatemala only two collective bargaining agreements exist among more than 200 textile factories. Now, U.S. Trade Ambassador Portman claims that poor enforcement is the only problem with Central America's labor regimes, not inadequate laws. Yet there are dozens of serious deficiencies in Central American labor laws. CAFTA does not require compliance with international labor standards like the freedom to associate and to bargain collectively, nor does it protect women against outright discrimination. And CAFTA offers no protection against weakening, gutting, or eliminating existing laws in the future. We need trade that serves women and workers in all of our countries, not agreements that force women into these awful conditions and places a downward pressure on the wages and working conditions that women in America have fought so very hard for from the very beginning in the mid-1930s, women like my own mother who was the first member of my family ever to earn a living wage when she struggled for the formation of the first union at an auto parts plant in our community. We do not want CAFTA to roll back standards for women of this hemisphere and this continent. Women of the Americas should not stand for it. CAFTA would devastate family farmers just like it did in Mexico under NAFTA when over a million and a half peasants were forced off their land and forced to migrate somewhere just to try to find a better way of life. And they end up working in these sweat shop zones or fleeing across our border, working under the table, not having a decent labor agreement under which their lives, and indeed their livelihoods, can be guaranteed. Already over 60 percent of the workers in Central America in their factories, in the banana packing houses are women. They work in very low-skill, low-wage jobs with absolutely few labor protections. CAFTA would do very little to protect their labor rights in the sweat shops in which they spend the majority of their young years. Women have reported forced pregnancy testing, sexual harassment, and even physical abuse in this sector where women assemble clothing, pack bananas, and try to eke out a living for themselves and their families. I want to thank STITCH, a small organization that supports the voices of these women being heard here in the Congress of the United States.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I can remember what it felt like being here in this Congress as we were first debating the invasion of Iraq. And I remember asking the question, if it did not go well, as the President of the United States and Secretary of Defense said it would, who would assume the long-term burden of security and policing in that country? And I can remember some very respected Members of this Chamber saying to me privately, do not worry, Marcy. You can buy your way to victory over there. You can buy anything you want. You can even buy people. You can even buy troops. Now, 2 years later we witness daily the results of that arrogance. All the money being handed out, the billions of dollars on the streets, the Iraqi policing force cannot even get up three battalions to defend their own country. We ought to think about that. And filling the gap are our troops, God bless them, wanting to give to our Nation, upholding what this President and Congress has asked them to do, an administration that, in my judgment, has been far too careless and reckless with their lives. Now we are being told that 160,000 Iraqis have now been trained, and yet all the professionals tell us if you can count three battalions over there that are ready to fight, you are doing well. So tonight, Mr. Speaker, I rise to discuss the disturbing state of recruiting for our U.S. Armed Services, particularly in the United States Army, which is bearing the brunt of that conflict. The newspapers report this week also that the applications for our Nation's service academies are down all over the country. This is not a good sign for regular order in our military. While the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force met their recruiting goals just for the month of May, the Army fell woefully short. They were able to bring in just 75 percent of their monthly goal. Their target was 6,700, and they managed to recruit 5,039 young Americans. This is fully 1,661 recruits less than they need and that would meet the Army's goal to maintain their end-strength for this year. Without any public notice, the U.S. Army lowered its recruiting goals in May, by the way, from 8,050 to 6,700; and I calculate that the Army thus fell 38 percent short of their real recruiting goal. And we ask our services how are they going to meet their ultimate goal for this year. They are currently 39,036 recruits away from hitting their ultimate number. And they have not had a monthly target that exceeded 8,000. So how on Earth do we expect that we can meet the goal of having units that are fully recruited? In terms of year-to-day mission achieved, the Army Reserve, Army National Guard, Naval Reserve and Marine Corps were all nearly 20 percent below the number needed to achieve their yearly goals. So now we hear that the Army wants to offer an additional enlistment bonus of $40,000 per recruit. And Army Times reports that the Army is proposing a pilot program to provide up to $50,000 for home mortgages for those who sign up for active duty. I have to tell you, being from a family of Marines and infantrymen, I do not think that the people of this country want to be bought either. There is a code in the military of duty, honor, and country. That is priceless. And to see these kinds of numbers being waved around cuts to the quick for a Member like myself. And throwing more and more money at our college students who are indebted, there is something that seems rather coarse and against the military code of honor that we have all come to respect and what we see the current Department of Defense doing. I do not fault the young men and women of our country when they balk at joining the Armed Forces this year, be it active duty, Guard or Reserve. This is not what they had been led to believe would happen in Iraq. They have seen over 1,700 Americans perish, 12,861 soldiers terribly wounded. And we have seen 70 daily attacks on average now in Iraq. And 67 percent of our active duty Army troops have been deployed at least twice since 2001, and 30 percent of our National Guard and 24 percent of our Reserve troops were deployed more than once in the same time frame. This has been so hard on families. Mr. Speaker, I will continue later this week with additional information on what is happening in our beloved Armed Forces in this country. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss the disturbing state of recruiting for the U.S. Armed Services, particularly in the United States Army. Post reports today that applications are down at our nation's service academies as well. On Friday June 10th, the Department of Defense released the May recruiting and retention statistics for the active and reserve components. These numbers display a negative pattern for certain components of our forces--one that is very distressing to this Member of Congress. While the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force met their recruiting goals for the month of May, the Army fell woefully short. They were able to bring in just 75 percent of their monthly goal--5,039 of the target 6,700. This is a full 1,661 recruits less than the Army needs and means that the Army must to maintain their end-strength for FY 2005. And this percentage is mild compared to what it should have been. Without any public notice, the U.S. Army lowered its recruiting goals for May from 8,050 to 6,700. Using these numbers, I calculate that the Army would have fallen 38 percent short of their recruiting goal. Thirty-eight percent Mr. Speaker. This raises many, many questions. Why was this target goal lowered with no explanation? How does the Army expect to meet their congressionally mandated end-strength totals in the last four months of this fiscal year? The Army is currently 39,036 recruits away from hitting this number. That is just under 10,000 new recruits per month. Mr. Speaker, the Army has not recruited this many people in a single month all year. They have not had a monthly target that exceeded 8,000. How on earth do they expect to make this happen? And this shortfall is just for the active duty component. The Army Reserve recruited 82 percent of their May monthly goal, the Marine Corps Reserve just 88 percent of their monthly goal and the Navy Reserve brought aboard 94 percent of their monthly goal. This is not a new trend. As of March 31st, four of the Reserve components were still falling significantly short of their recruiting objectives. In terms of year-to-date mission achieved, the Army Reserve, Army National Guard, Naval Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve were all nearly 20 percent below the number needed to achieve their yearly goals. This information should be frightening to every Member of Congress. Not only is the shortfall affecting the active duty components, it is tricking down to our Guard and Reserve as well. Mr. Speaker, I think that this speaks volumes. So what steps have been taken to increase recruiting for the services? The Army wants to double the enlistment bonus for certain hard to fill jobs to $40,000 (as reported by USA Today on June 10) and the Army Times reports that the ``Army is proposing a pilot program to provide up to $50,000 in home mortgage help for those who sign up for active duty.'' All this on top of having spent nearly $200 million on positive and upbeat television ads and increased their recruiter pool by 1,000. Moreover, the Army National Guard has announced that they will add another 500 recruiters for a total plus-up of 1,900 (to 4,600) in 2005. The Army Reserve is adding 734 for a total of 1,774. Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that simply increasing the number of military recruiters and throwing more and more money in the faces of our nation's high-school and college students is going to solve the recruiting shortfall. No, we need to dig deep to understand the factors that are causing these shortfalls and address the situation there. A Congressional Research Service report on this very issue notes that the United States has become embroiled in several major military operations overseas ``that have dramatically increased the operations tempo of the military services. This has been especially true in the Army, which has shouldered the bulk of the manpower burden associated with the occupation of Iraq. Additionally, more military personnel have been killed or wounded in Iraq than in any other conflict since the Vietnam War. Many observers have expressed concern that the current operations tempo, and the level of casualties in Iraq, might lead to lower recruiting and retention rates, thereby jeopardizing the vitality of today's all volunteer military.'' There cannot be any disagreement that the Global War on Terror (specifically operations in Iraq and Afghanistan) has taken its toll on military recruitment and retention. And I'm not sure that anyone over at the Department of Defense is listening. I don't fault young men and women when they balk at joining the armed forces this year--be it active duty, guard or reserve. This is not what they had been led to believe would happen in Iraq. Not when we have seen more than 1,700 Americans perish in Iraq since March of 2003. Not when 12,861 soldiers have been wounded in action. Not when last month saw approximately 70 daily attacks by insurgents in Iraq. Not when 67 percent of Active Duty Army troops have been deployed at least twice between 9/01 and 1/05. Not when 30 percent of National Guard and 24 percent of Reserve troops were also deployed more than once in that same time-frame. Not when we are sending troops to Iraq without the best armor, vehicles and equipment possible. And not when this Administration routinely shortchanges the amount of money we should spend on Veterans in this nation all while mismanaging an unpopular war. Mr. Speaker, our recruiting problems stem directly from the Administration's poor plan for Iraq. The young men and women in this great nation are not opposed to serving our nation in times of need. We know they are quite willing to sacrifice for the greater good. But I think it is undeniable that they do not believe protecting the oil pipelines by Iraq and unilaterally and preemptively attacking a nation that posed no strategic threat to the United States is a part of the greater good.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. As the gentleman says, it ought to be called not free trade, because it is not free trade. It is not good trade, we know that. It certainly is not positive trade, because all we are yielding are deficits. Maybe we should call it sweat shop trade or indentured trade. There is some other word that should go here.