Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the able Member the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for spearheading this Special Order this evening and for the great work he always does, and the gentleman from Youngstown, Ohio, and the surrounding areas, for being so much a part of our efforts to change America's trade policy so it again works for America's communities, America's workers and America's farmers. If you loved NAFTA, you are going to love CAFTA, and I cannot think of a single American that really loves NAFTA, because we have lost so many jobs, nearly 1 million jobs, since that agreement was passed in 1993. It is really amazing to me to think about everything that is needed in this country and what the Bush administration is trying to push through this Congress. Just look at rising gas prices. Is this administration and Congress really trying to do anything to help America become energy-independent again? No, not really. We continue to become more dependent on imported petroleum than before this administration took office. All of our pension funds are underfunded. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which is supposed to undergird all of our Nation's pension funds in private industry, needs over $23 billion to try to restore just the current needs in that bill. Are we getting a bill to fully fund the Nation's pension guarantee fund? No. The bill is not coming up here on that. What about Social Security? Well, their answer is privatize it. Try to divert money from the regular trust fund, rather than finding a way to make sure that Social Security is healthy long term. Health care, is anything really being done to insure America's families and to try to take care of all those in our nursing homes who do not have enough nurses at bedside? No, that bill is not coming up here. Or veterans, to make sure we have enough money in the accounts of this country to take care of all the disabled veterans returning home? We see our Family Assistance Centers having to raise money to buy special access ramps to people's houses and to try to take care of families because we lack TRICARE when our veterans come home. No, we are not getting a bill to do anything about that. What we are getting is we are getting a bill that would expand NAFTA to include five more countries, actually six more countries if you count the Dominican Republic. What it would do is add over 50 million more people into this NAFTA union, people who have hands to do work, but who through that work cannot really increase their own standard of living, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) has said, who could buy the goods that are made in this country, because they do not earn enough to afford them. But it would add 50 million more people to this trade effort. That means that our jobs, as happened with NAFTA, would continue to be outsourced, shipped out, even in greater quantity than they already are, to Guatemala, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, all these places so very far from home, and more of our agricultural production as well. So we are literally being asked in this agreement to add a State the size of California, 50 million people, or four States the size of Ohio, actually five Ohios, if you look at the population of the countries that they are trying to add to this DR-CAFTA agreement, add that many more people to our union and then say it is all going to work. This is an example of what has happened since NAFTA was passed back in the early 1990s and what has happened to our trade deficit, if you add NAFTA, if you add the special agreement with China and all these other trade agreements. We have fallen every year into deeper and deeper and deeper deficit. We are now over half a trillion dollars a year more goods coming into this country than exports going out. I just wanted to place the record as I begin my comments this evening that in the last official count in March-April of this year, the overall U.S. trade deficit in goods and services rose another 6.34 percent from March to April, climbing from $53.6 billion to $57 billion overall, on top of all of the deficit we already had from last year, and this represents the fourth highest combined monthly deficit on record for our whole country. The deficit with Mexico in that period of time rose to $4.4 billion, up another 3.29 percent, and the deficit with Canada rose to $5.4 billion, just for that month, another 8.9 percent increase. If I could just demonstrate these other two charts as I begin this evening, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) referenced the trade deficits in various countries. With Canada, since NAFTA was signed, the proponents said, just like they are saying now, if we sign this agreement, we are going to have all the trade. Except it is modeled after the NAFTA accord. And after we signed NAFTA with Canada, though we already had a deficit with NAFTA, after the signing of NAFTA it just went deeper and deeper to where it doubled and tripled, more production in Canada than here in the United States. With Mexico, the very same pattern. This type of accord provides America with lost jobs, lost income, more imports coming in here than exports going out. With Mexico when NAFTA was signed, we actually had a little trade surplus with Mexico. We have fallen into heavy, heavy deficit, now nearly $50 billion a year in the hole with Mexico. Finally, before I yield back the time the gentleman was kind enough to give me, we already have today a $1.9 billion deficit in goods with these nations already. All CAFTA is going to do is push those numbers further down, which means more lost jobs in Ohio, more workers who cannot afford to own their home, these increasing bankruptcies we see across our country, and the same-old-same-old being thrust upon the American people voted on here in this Congress by some of the most powerful economic interests on the face of the globe. So I am very thankful that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis) was speaking earlier this evening, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gene Green), now the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), to talk about, you know what, it is time to draw a line in the sand and say if an agreement has been out of whack, seriously in deficit for more than 3 years, it ought to be renegotiated, and we should not add any more pain to the American economy than we already have. I want to thank the gentleman for allowing me to speak this evening.

Ms. KAPTUR. And part of that I think is the development and sustenance of the middle class. We know that the workers in these other countries, because of the way the countries operate, are not creating a middle class. They are endowing the very top. In fact, they have a word for this, they call it oligarchies or plutocracies, they are endowing the wealthy, and the vast majority of people are poor. In Mexico, post-NAFTA, more people are poor today than before NAFTA was passed, and many of their small businesses were drummed out of existence, and many of their independent farmers are wandering across North America trying to find even enough to eat. In our country, we have been druming down the middle class. These other countries do not have a chance to build a middle class. Who is really benefiting off of the pain that is felt by the workers of our country and these other countries? It is very clear. There are a few extraordinarily powerful corporations that are trading workers off against one another. And we as a Congress have a responsibility to stand for the development of the middle class and trade agreements that sustain the middle class in our country and help these other countries develop economies where their wealth comes from demand-led growth inside their own countries, not exporting everything they make to other places, paying their workers nothing, and then charging us high prices for those goods here in this country. We do not have that kind of trade regimen. That is why we need to stop CAFTA and go back and renegotiate NAFTA, and any other trade agreement where we have sustained massive deficits over the last 3 years. That ought to be the priority of the President of the United States and of this Congress.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, people in our country intuitively know something is wrong. They go to the store and they try to buy something and they see ``made in China,'' or they see ``assembled in Mexico.'' And they also know that the quality of production is going down, that the metals that are used are not as good as they used to be; that the clothing is comprised of fabrics that do not breath as well and they do not wear as well. People know this. Shoes. They know that the shoes, most of which are imported now, they are not good quality. There is not rubber on the bottoms anymore on good leather. Now we have these combination fabrics and your feet hurt. We think about, and at least I, of the three this evening who are talking, am old enough to remember when America made American-made, quality goods. We used to even make American flags. And when they had that rally over here, the Speaker handed out flags made in China. Mr. Speaker, I can remember an America where there really was an America here, where we really made things, and we were proud of what we made. When you have these kinds of trade deficits that are massive, over a half a trillion dollars a year in deficit, more imports coming in here than exports going out, you are displacing production. I had an experience this past week in my district where I went through an old power plant, and the innards are being taken out because it is passe, its technology is passe. I said, well, now, where are we sending the copper to be reprocessed and used? They said oh, the copper was bought up by China. I said, oh. Well, what about the turbines? Well, the turbines are going down to Argentina. I said, you mean there is nobody in America that even wants to use the scrap metal? We look at the prices of steel and, in terms of coking, there are no coking operations here. The Chinese have us around the neck because they have been charging $43 a ton for coke and making steel production so expensive in our country. We are seeing parts of us being dismantled and sent somewhere else. I was down in North Carolina talking with some of the producers of hogs and turkeys and chickens down there, and the grains, rather than coming from the Midwest, is coming from Argentina delivered at the Port of Wilmington. The farmers in North Carolina and South Carolina want to buy grain from the Midwest, but yet it is coming from Argentina. It is very interesting to think what is happening to our country. Then, on the side of some of these nations, take the Dominican Republic. We had a couple of young people come to Toledo from the Dominican Republic a couple of years ago from one of our church groups, and they actually worked in a company making apparel; it was a South Korean contractor on contract to the government of the Dominican Republic, and these young women were making T shirts that were to be sold in the United States, all of their production came here. They were paid 12 cents a T-shirt. They worked 14 to 18 hour days, 7 days a week; they had absolutely no say in their company, nothing, forget it. They were just bonded workers. If they spoke up, they were fired. They worked behind barbed wire fences and gates, the plant was inside, it was like a reservation, actually. When they came to Toledo, we took them to a couple of shopping centers to try to find the shirt that they had made and, sure enough, we did. We found the T shirts hanging on a rack. This young woman, she just went up to it, she pulled it off and then we looked at the price tag. It was $20. I cannot forget her face. She just stood there. She said, you mean in America it is sold for $20 and I earn 12 cents? She could not even, she could not even fathom it. I said, yes, and let us think about who made the money off the sweat of your brow. This was actually sweat shop goods coming into the United States from the Dominican Republic by way of a special contract signed with the South Korean manufacturer who is doing business and, really, whose practices cannot be monitored well, and these young women were earning nothing. Now, is that the kind of world that we want to create? We are.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Schwarz amendment emphasizing the intent of Congress that full funding for the control of Emerald Ash Borer must be provided. I had intended to offer an amendment emphasizing the need for emergency funding and thank Chairman Bonilla for his work with us on this issue, and with respect and appreciation knowing we still have much to work on will not extend floor debate today. It is vital that we take action as quickly as possible to deal with control and containment this year. USDA, at the order of the Office of Management and Budget, has not been able to fully respond to the requests for funds from Ohio and Michigan. Ohio recently requested an additional $10.1 million that is needed immediately. The Emerald Ash Borer was identified in Michigan in July, 2002. It has been in Michigan for perhaps five years, having come in packing material from Asia. Since then, several counties in southeastern Michigan and now counties in northwestern Ohio have been infected with this creature. Literally billions of ash trees are at risk unless this creature is stopped. Regrettably, there is no known way to eradicate the insect without starving it from new wood sources. So as trees by the thousands are being cut down in our region. As I said, the State of Ohio has recently asked the Department of Agriculture for an additional $10.1 million in emergency funding to control the spread of this insect. This is in addition to the $11.6 million that was requested earlier this year, although USDA provided only $10.2 million. This is in addition to more than $50 million that has already been provided to Michigan to control the spread of the insect from its primary infestation site. Mr. Chairman, Ohio needs more funding now to control this insect for which it bears no responsibility. Neighborhoods are being devastated in Ohio, as they already have been in Michigan. Businesses are adversely affected. Property values are being adversely affected. The longer we take the provide effective controls, the more damage will be caused, the broader the area of infestation will become, and the more it will ultimately cost to end this infestation. I had planned to offer my own amendment calling for emergency use of funds to deal with this problem, even though I know that the bill already provides some funding for emerald ash control in the coming year--$14 million even though expert opinion suggests that we will need $55 million. Hopefully this money will come via the emergency route. Chairman Bonilla and ranking member DeLauro, I thank you for your support. I want to work with you to secure the right level of funding to deal with this disease, as well as the many other invasive species pests that plague several states. They may be different in their makeup, but they are equally devastating to the communities they infest.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies of the Committee on Appropriations, for yielding me this time in support of H.R. 2744; and I want to commend and thank the gentleman from Texas (Chairman Bonilla) and his fine staff for their work on this important bill. We know it is not easy under the budget constraints, and we appreciate all the work that has been done. I especially want to thank and compliment our new ranking member, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), and her staff for her efforts to be sure our Nation's diverse needs are met, including in agriculture, in food safety, in pharmaceutical safety, and all of the responsibilities this subcommittee has. It has been a privilege for me to have served as ranking member for several years on this subcommittee, and I have full confidence that the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) will continue to distinguish herself doing an outstanding job in this new role as demonstrated by this very impressive start. I want to take a brief moment today to raise two issues which are part of this appropriations bill and thank the committee for its support. Two aspects of this legislation will help rural America produce for the future, produce for the marketplace and develop expanding markets and be value-added for the benefit of both producers and consumers as well as for our Nation. I have been a very strong supporter of bioenergy funding every year since we first added the first-ever energy title to the farm bill in the year 2001. It took us to this new century and millenium to envision a new energy future based on American agriculture. It is amazing it has been such an uphill struggle to get the Department of Agriculture to help the farmers of our country pull this new industry forward. Sadly, it is the Department of Agriculture that has been the most lax in this partnership. Every citizen knows America cannot continue importing our fuels. We must restore energy independence here at home. No group is better situated to do it immediately than our farmers and ranchers. More ethanol and biodiesel are being produced each year. America is only beginning to realize the full potential of American agriculture to help move America toward energy independence sooner rather than later. Just yesterday, producers from around our country displayed a broad array of bio-based products here up on Capitol Hill, ranging from everything from trash cans to lubricants to carpeting to new materials to ethanol to soy diesel, all from American agriculture, as we unlock the mystery of organic chemistry and renewable energy for our future. The President of the United States has gone to a number of events around the country claiming he supports biofuels. He was at another one in Virginia last week. But one of the key facts that the press fails to report is that the President's budget keeps proposing cuts in the programs he claims to support. Year after year, we have seen cuts of $50 million or more proposed in the bioenergy program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is a very small program. Year after year, we have to work here in this House and in this Congress to restore it. I am very pleased that this bill includes $23 million for section 9006 renewable energy grants and loans. Given the growing support for this program, I am happy that we were able to obtain the money in the base bill without the need to offer amendments, as we have had to do over the past 2 years. One of the real success stories in American agriculture in recent years, beyond this effort to try to convert to renewable fuels, has been the rapid rise of farmers markets and roadside stands across our country to help our small family and medium-sized farmers direct market. As cartels take over our food system, this is a way forward for independent farmers across our country. These markets are not just in rural areas. They are in urban areas where there are no big grocery stores. They are in urban areas where ethnic markets offer great opportunities. They are in urban areas offering economic development activity that links knowledgeable consumers with appreciative vendors. They are in suburban areas. In fact, they are right here behind the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where we had to fight to get the Department to allow a farmers market to operate so the millions of tourists who come here every year could buy products grown in Virginia and Maryland and help our local producers realize some of that income directly. We were able to secure, with the help of the gentleman from Texas (Chairman Bonilla) and the ranking member, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), as part of this bill to begin funding for the Farmers Market Promotion Program authorized in the farm bill several years ago. Competitive applications from across the country will be solicited to help expand the availability of fruits and vegetables to consumers who want these products but cannot get them as readily as you might believe. It will help link our farmers to the real consumer market that they deserve to connect to. One regret I do have is we were not able to increase funding for the Seniors Farmers Market Nutrition program, which has shown that linking senior citizens with area farmers is an absolute win-win for both nutrition and for American agriculture. The $15 million provided by the farm bill is only about half of what the Nation is already saying that it needs. But there is no doubt that this program could expand greatly in the years to come, and we are going to make every effort to do that. I look forward to working to help these programs expand to meet the true need among our Nation's seniors as well as others as we move to conference and urge support for the fiscal 2006 agriculture appropriations bill. Again, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Chairman Bonilla) for his great composure during committee meetings and his great leadership, and also the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) and congratulate her for the great job she has done on this bill.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, there is a major political scandal that is unfolding in the State of Ohio; and I am sure Americans remember how important Ohio was in this recent Presidential election. If citizens wish to know more about it, they should go to the Toledo Blade Web site, the major newspaper that has been involved in helping to put information out to the public and help Ohioans and, indeed, people in this country, understand what is happening. In Ohio what is happening is that the Governor of our State has permitted millions and millions of dollars of workers' money from the Ohio Workers Compensation Fund to be invested in high-risk instruments, coins and we think perhaps what is called collectibles, although we are not sure yet. And these investments are ones that no other State in the Union has allowed. But what happened was that some of these so-called high-risk investments when they went to try to find them, it appears as though millions of dollars of these coins are now missing. There is a grand jury that has been seated in Ohio now that is beginning to call people forward because some of these same individuals involved in this scandal were used to channel money to the Bush campaign in Ohio. In fact, the President of the United States has already returned $4,000 to one of the givers. We do not know where this is all going to lead, but it is a huge, huge story. Our Governor, when asked, what do you think about this, that the State of Ohio has taken all of this money, over $50 million initially and given it to this coin dealer to put into these high-risk investments, what do you think of it, the Governor of Ohio said, hey, we are making money on that. I think it is a pretty good idea. He thought he was making money on it? Well, think about it. How is it secured? No other State in the Union permitted investments in coins and collectibles. He was only looking at what he thought was yield. But the cardinal rules of investing public money are safety first; liquidity, can you get it back over night if you need it; and only running a distant third, yield. This is a very serious issue and yesterday in the State of Colorado there was a search warrant that was issued on one of the related individuals involved in this scandal, and they were in his house for over 12 hours pulling out investments in cigars, wine, over half a million dollars of wine I guess in that house alone. The State of Ohio is now, through the Inspector General of Ohio, trying to find where is the workmen's compensation money that was improperly invested by those responsible, who had public responsibility for this. Then today a story broke in Ohio that this same Bureau of Workers Compensation admitted it has lost $215 million in a high-risk fund that few people knew about. The bureau had invested $355 million with a Pittsburgh investment firm called MDL Capital Management beginning in 1998. But last year after diverting $225 million into a fund that works like a hedge fund, the fund itself lost $215 million. And although the bureau says it knew about the loss since last year, Governor Taft was only notified about it today. There are investigations going on, including the Ohio Inspector General, the bureau spokesman, Jeremy Jackson told the Toledo Blade today. But the news came to light as a handful of agencies are looking into the bureau and its dealings with the Toledo area coin dealer, Mr. Tom Noe, who is one of the people that took some of this $50 million and put it into coins and purportedly collectibles. The Ohio Ethics Commission on Monday said it was looking into other investments held by the bureau, the agency charged with providing assistance to injured workers. This is where I want to say in my district, the ninth district of Ohio, we have had four deaths of people, iron workers trying to build the largest transportation project in Ohio history over the Meumee River. These were unnecessary deaths because the State of Ohio was not inspecting the project properly. In fact, though the project was a year and a half ahead of schedule, they signed an acceleration agreement with the company to try to make the workers finish the project faster, even though it was a year and a half ahead of schedule. And the cranes that were used in this project collapsed because the company was not securing the foot of the cranes properly. So the State of Ohio not only has taken workers' compensation money and misinvested it, they have not even done their job in protecting the lives of citizens who are trying to build Ohio forward in a very rough economy. It is unbelievable what is going on in our State. At the center of this new loss of money was a man named Terry Gasper who was the former chief financial officer for Ohio's Bureau of Workers Compensation that is supposed to be there for the workers. The money is set aside by the companies for the workers, not to be put in these crazy investments that can never be recovered, but for workers who are injured on the job. By the way, on that transportation project in our district, we have many injured workers who would benefit from that money. I will be submitting for the Record the most recent article about additional losses from the State of Ohio. Shame on the Governor of Ohio. Shame on the State officials of the State of Ohio. What a tragedy they have perpetrated on the people of our State. [From the Blade. June 7, 2005] (By Mike Wilkinson and James Drew) Columbus.--The Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation admitted today that it lost $215 million in a high-risk fund that few people knew about. The bureau had invested $355 million with a Pittsburgh investment firm, MDL Capital Management, beginning in 1998. But last year, after diverting $225 million into a fund that works like a hedge fund, the fund lost $215 million. Although the bureau has known about the loss since last year, Gov. Bob Taft was notified about it today. ``There are investigations going on, including the [Ohio] Inspector General,'' bureau spokesman Jeremy Jackson told The Blade. The news came to light as a handful of agencies are looking into the bureau and its dealings with Toledo-area coin dealer Tom Noe. The Ohio Ethics Commission on Monday said it was looking into other investments held by the bureau, the agency charged with providing assistance to injured workers. At the center of the MDL deal were Terry Gasper, the former chief financial officer for the bureau, and Jim McLean, the chief investment officer. In a memo to the governor, Tina Kielmeyer, acting bureau administrator, said Mr. Gasper did not notify former bureau Administrator James Conrad about the investment. In the wake of the growing Noe scandal, Mr. Conrad resigned two week ago and left the agency on Friday. Mr. McLean was put on paid administrative leave today pending a management review of the situation. The bureau last year asked the Ohio Attorney General to appoint special counsel in the case and ordered Mr. Gasper to either resign or be fired. He resigned Oct. 6, 2004.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), ranking member, for yielding me this time. I also want to thank the gentleman from California (Chairman Hunter) for including the amendment concerning America's energy independence in the en bloc amendments. I thank him for helping us move toward energy independence. We all know that our Nation is petroleum addicted, that those supplies are being drawn down from the most undemocratic places in the world. America has to change and the world has to change in this century. This amendment requires the Department of Defense and related agencies to conduct a study and report back to Congress on the use of new fuels, biodiesel and ethanol, that can be manufactured right here in the good old U.S.A. and used by the Armed Forces and the defense agencies, as compared to how the Department currently uses petroleum. The study requires a review of requirements for increased use of biodiesel and ethanol by the U.S. Department of Defense. It requires a forecast of the requirements of the Armed Forces and the Department for the use of biodiesel and ethanol fuels for each of the years 2007 through 2012. It requires a review of what actions the Department of Defense has taken to work in collaboration with State and local governments to support the expansion of alternative fuel refueling stations that are accessible to the public. Members might think about the one that is located right across the street, the Citgo station, from the Pentagon itself. We know that the Department of Defense has the largest vehicle fleet in the United States Government. It should be a leader in the use of new fuels and power systems. It should be a leader also in alternative fuels research to help America transition to a new day. So we are really looking to this report to help us meet that growing need for energy independence. I end with a story as a member of the Defense Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations. It was shocking to me to hear the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld, when he came before us and I asked him, ``Mr. Secretary, what is your role and your department's role, in helping America to move toward energy independence?'' Again, over two- thirds of the petroleum we use is imported and it puts America in a very vulnerable position strategically on the globe. And his answer was, ``I do not have anything to do with it. That is the job of another department.'' No, Mr. Secretary. It is every department's job, and it is every household's job in this country to convert. You and your department-- the largest in the government of the U.S.--are not exempt. In fact, you must be the leader. I thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) for including this amendment in the en bloc. amendments and the membership to ask support the measure.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Today we in the Congress are debating the essence of human life, the creation of life and the destruction of life. We are debating how one's family's life code, their DNA, is propagated and bequeathed to the next generation. Each human life begins as an embryo. What concerns me, as someone who cherishes life and is a strong supporter of medical research for epilepsy, for diabetes, for spinal cord injury, for Alzheimer's, for so many debilitating diseases, is that this bill seems to be on a very fast track. It is moving through this Congress at record speed and not under the normal procedures we depend on to make informed decisions. Today I rise with more questions than answers on this bill. I respect the advocates. I respect those that do not support the bill. But I know one thing: On a matter of life and death, Congress should proceed carefully, thoughtfully and in an informed manner. All points of view must be heard and not suppressed. Most surprisingly, this bill never had a subcommittee nor a full committee hearing. So my opinion today about this bill is: not yet. I am not yet confident that this institution has allowed for full dialogue to develop on a matter of such gravitas. Regardless of how you view the bills before us, the lack of a full hearing record is most troubling indeed. I ask myself, why is the normal committee process subverted on a matter of such consequence? What do proponents have to lose? Where is the committee transcript that will tell us the diverging views of scientists on the potentiality of adult stem cell versus embryonic stem cell to improve life? The fact is, there is none. Some evidence indicates stem cell research from nonembryonic sources now has made a difference in treating 58 different diseases. We need to know more about the science. Then, where is the committee record that helps us struggle with the essential moral question of: how exactly does one destroy life in order to save it? Where is the committee transcript that reveals to the majority of Members not on the committee the ethical questions that we and every family should be addressing concerning the proprietary nature of the DNA in any embryonic cell? We go to great lengths as a Congress to protect intellectual property rights, as our Constitution requires. After all, this Nation provides for patents for computer software, for medical devices, for seed corn genomes; and yet we provide no protection for the DNA of a human embryo? Whose DNA will be bequeathed to the future and whose will not? How do we evaluate this bill when so much is missing? How do we evaluate which embryos should be allowed to be sent to research and how many to be adopted by infertile couples so those embryos can be developed into full human beings? Who will decide? Is it just a matter for the individual couple, or is there a larger, societal responsibility to protect life? The woman whose eggs are being taken, how is she legally protected? How is her husband or mate legally protected in this relationship? And what are the rights of the embryo? Where is the hearing record that informs us how to carefully manage any transfer of human embryos to research so their essential worth is recognized? We are told that the ethical requirements section of the bill will suffice, yet this section is but 156 words long. It directs that NIH will issue final guidelines within 60 days of passage of this bill. Sixty days? That is not even enough time to grow a tomato plant. I ask, is this realistic? And further, who will influence NIH without more congressional guidance? Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of money to be made in this new field of life science. I think Congress should know who is likely to be making it, especially when Federal funding becomes involved. Which biogenetic and pharmaceutical firms stand to benefit the most from moving this bill forward? Exactly who are they? Which immunosuppressant drug companies? Do we as Members of Congress not have a right to know something more from the nonexistent transcript from the committee? I find it most coincidental that last week the South Koreans doing research in this arena announced that they had cloned cells, making it appear as though, if Congress did not act today, America would fall behind in the world research community. I found the timing of that announcement just all too convenient and asked myself, which companies were behind it? In my opinion, the subcommittee and committees of jurisdiction have not met their responsibilities to this Congress, by abdicating their hearing responsibility. All we have are documents from outside proponents and opponents, and frankly, that is not good enough. Where is the hearing record to which all Members can refer which recounts the struggles of proponents and opponents with the ethical requirements that should be a part of this bill, and not merely leave it up to the National Institutes of Health? On a matter of such magnitude, where some human embryos will be destroyed in the hope that new cures are made possible, the Congress needs to be more responsible. I ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the DeGette-Castle bill and remand it back to committee. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, it is not in the American people's interest to change Senate rules that assure that all points of view are heard and which have been in place for over 200 years. Mr. Speaker, today Senator Frist is prepared to take the extreme action of upending historic Senate rules under the guise that he says all judicial nominees are entitled to an up or down vote. That is what he is saying today, but he was singing a different tune back when President Clinton was in the White House. Back in 2000, Republican Senators attempted to filibuster two of that administration's appointments to the 9th Circuit. Senator Frist joined some of his Republican colleagues back then in continuing a filibuster of nominee Richard Paez. There are also other ways to prevent up or down votes on the floor. They can stall them in committee, and that is what happened to President Clinton's nominees. More than one-third of Clinton's appeals court nominees during the last 4 years of his presidency were never given an up or down vote on the Senate floor. We did not hear Senator Frist demanding an up or down vote then, and while Democrats and President Clinton complained about the treatment of Clinton's nominees from Republicans at that time, they never came close to subverting 200 years of historic rules that have been in place to assure majority and minority opinions in that Chamber are heard. Sometimes, with one party rule, the majority becomes abusive in its use of power. This is just such an instance. The Senate as an institution belongs to the American people, to those who agree with the majorty and those who hold minority opinions all have a right to be heard. Under our Constitution and time-tested institutional procedures, let all our people's voices be heard.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I want to follow on that point because if one looks just at NAFTA and Mexico, and the inability when we were debating that to include provisions for those that were going to be displaced from their farms in Mexico, what is propelling U.S. immigration is NAFTA because every year now we have over 450,000 individuals from Mexico coming over our border, the vast majority illegal. You say, well, why would they do that? Because they are in desperate circumstances. Desperation propels them, just as the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) says. Imagine being willing to die going across the desert in Arizona to get here, a place you do not even know, and what is at the root of it? The root of it is that their land is no longer productive. The big corporate interests down there buy imported corn, and these people were given no way of transitioning. They had a heartless government, and I think because they did, we might see the first massive historic change in Mexico's elections next year. I hope so, and I want to say to the gentleman from Portsmith, Ohio (Mr. Strickland), when he talked about the churches and the synagogues and the temples and the mosques, they are doing some of the most important work in these trade agreements. They are trying to reach out to people, just like you said, and whether it is fair trade coffee or whether it is quilts or whatever they are buying, they are trying to bring it in and pay people a decent price for whatever that product is and to cut out these middle extortionists, I call them, people in the middle that are trading on that squalor and that exploitation. Also to say that one of the greatest religious leaders I ever met said ultimately God's judgment would demand not just individual morality for us as persons, but in a rich and powerful Nation like America, justice of us as a Nation. So we are judged not just as persons within our own family, but the kind of society and country we create. We will be judged on many levels; and I think these trade agreements are, as you said, immoral because those who are the least among us are hurt the most. I think of Norma McFadden from Dixon Ticonderoga in Sandusky, Ohio, who worked there her whole life and was about my age and then was told you get a pink slip, even though the company was profitable, and moved to Mexico. What happened to Norma? What happened to Norma was she could not afford health benefits because under the Federal program, COBRA, it costs about $800 a month. Well, she lost her job. She could not afford the $800 for COBRA. So at 55, 58 years of age, she went back to school to become a phlebotomist to learn how to take blood, and she had to drive to work in her old ramshackle car to try to go to school and ultimately tried to get a job at a hospital as a receptionist and just trying to tread water there in the years when really she should have some peace of mind because she has been a working woman her whole life, she has raised her family. So, to me, these trade agreements are some of the most anti-life measures that I have ever seen. They hurt people all over our world, surely those in our country who just do not have another leg to stand on; and I think God will judge America very harshly for what we have done because we are in the power position in negotiating these agreements.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, if I could interject here, the company that the gentlewoman mentioned from Illinois, Galesburg, Maytag. I actually own Maytags. What happened to the workers from the Galesburg plant? Were they transferred? Did they get other jobs? Were they just without work?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, very briefly, we had visitors from two nations, El Salvador and Honduras in our community. Some of our church groups brought them in. These were young women workers in some of those textile plants down there. They held up t-shirts that they made for which they received 12 cents, and then we took them to stores in our community. They found the very same t-shirts on the rack, and they were priced at $20. And I remember the expressions on their faces. They could not believe it. And yet those that are brokering in their poverty wages and exacting high prices here, $20 for a t-shirt, are making enormous amounts of money off of this kind of bonded labor and control of our marketplace without proper government intervention. So I also remember the gentlewoman from Chicago, Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) when we were down in Ciudad Juarez, I can remember the tear coming down her cheek when she saw that family living in those packing crates. I can remember that. When it pierces your heart, you never forget it.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, that is the way it has turned out to be, and I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for his great leadership and vision and taking this CAFTA fight to the American people. It is a great privilege also to join with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), our esteemed colleague from south and southeastern Ohio, who I know will be adding remarks and great insight as the evening proceeds; the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky); the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Carnahan); and we had the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) from the Cleveland area here a little bit earlier. It is really amazing to me when you have a trade agreement like NAFTA, that is so absolutely a failure, that now there is a new trade scheme, and they have got a name that rhymes with NAFTA. I just, I cannot believe it. I cannot believe they are over there. They have got a cookie-cutter system, and they are not paying attention to results. If we look at the recent history of our country, going back to the mid-1970s, when the first so-called free trade agreement was signed, every single year the United States has begun to develop trade deficits. That means we ship out more jobs abroad than we create jobs here at home. And we end up taking our income and paying somebody else to do the work that we used to do, and we accumulate these growing trade deficits. And they get worse with every decade. When NAFTA passed in the early 1990s, we actually had a trade surplus with Mexico, which immediately turned into a trade deficit; and with Canada we have doubled the deficit that we already had. When we signed the agreement with China, which those of us who were here voted against, we did not get any more jobs. We did not get any more income. All we got was more trade deficit. It is so deep America has never been in this kind of deep water before. In fact, this year the trade deficit will accumulate at over half a trillion dollars. America has never faced this kind of loss. So it is amazing to me that they name an agreement to rhyme with one of the biggest failures. And here are some charts, I think, that tell a fuller story about what has happened with the NAFTA agreement. When NAFTA was signed in 1994, we had accumulated trade deficits with Canada; but then every succeeding year, they got deeper and deeper and deeper. So, with Canada, we have not really benefited. And with Mexico, the surplus we had turned into a gigantic and growing deficit. And now what is happening with Mexico, of course, some of those jobs are being shifted to Latin America and to China. So NAFTA has been a negative. And what has been going on in terms of the United States, just take the auto industry which is the primary category of deficit with Mexico. We were already getting imports from Mexico prior to NAFTA's signing. Now it is just an avalanche coming the other way. And what we predicted has come true. Mexico has turned into an export platform to the United States. And what we are doing is actually creating a world system where people work for poverty wages or starvation wages. We have high- productivity poverty rather than high-productivity prosperity. And, finally, if one looks at the China agreement which has a relationship here because this is the same cookie-cutter approach that they are giving us with China, the deficits were growing, but then when permanent normal trade relations, if you can call an abnormal trade deficit normal, I have never understood the words they use. We are just hemorrhaging with China. And just one company alone, Wal-Mart, takes 10 percent of the exports that China sends around the world. So my basic point here this evening is, why should we have more of the same? Why should we believe them when they say it is going to be all right? And, indeed, I would like to place in the Record an article that was in the New York Times this week where the President of Costa Rica actually said he wants to postpone legislative review on this so-called CAFTA, which is an expansion of NAFTA, until an independent committee finds that it will not harm the poor. Well, it surely will harm the poor. And that is why, in nations like Mexico, we have historic demonstrations in Mexico City for example, of farmers, of peasants, of people just demonstrating and saying we cannot take it anymore; particularly in the countryside, the people are saying we cannot take it anymore. So I want to thank my colleague for bringing this issue to light. I think we have to be careful of the administration and their efforts to try to come in here and try to buy votes and say, what kinds of transportation project do you like? Oh, how much do you want? Do you need a bridge? Which way do you want it to go, east west, up, down, you know, below the ocean floor? I mean, we will do it for you. What else do you need? Do you need a base? We are moving a few bases around. That is what happened during NAFTA at the very end. The American people would have won that debate, but it was bought. It was bought and sold. And now look at the negative yield that it has produced for the American people. So I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for highlighting this this evening. And it has been a pleasure to join my colleagues tonight. [From the New York Times, May 10, 2005] Free Trade Pact Faces Trouble in Congress (By Elizabeth Becker) Washington.--Social Security is not the administration's only economic initiative that is in trouble in Congress. The current centerpiece of President Bush's trade agenda, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, is facing unusually united Democratic opposition as well as serious problems in overcoming well-entrenched special interest groups like sugar producers and much of the textile industry. With record trade deficits, concerns about lost jobs and an overarching fear that the United States is losing out in the accelerated pace of global changes, the sentiment in Congress is shifting away from approving new free trade agreements. ``I don't like Cafta; I am not going to vote for it; and I will do whatever I can to kill it,'' said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader. ``We are approaching a trillion-dollar trade deficit. We can't survive as a viable, strong country doing that.'' Even more troubling to the administration, which says free trade agreements are critical components of any effort to enhance American global competitiveness, is the stance of Republicans like Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, who wants to hold off on new bilateral trade agreements. In a speech on the Senate floor and in a later opinion-page article in the newspaper The Hill, Senator Chambliss said that even though his state is home to global companies like Coca-Cola, United Parcel Service and Georgia Pacific, he could no longer support bilateral trade agreements without being assured that ``American industries and workers are truly benefiting from these agreements.'' The trade deal, which was signed one year ago, involves a handful of tiny countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. But its prospects for moving forward have been soured by larger questions about China's enormous economic power and whether it is playing by the rules of trade in protecting intellectual property rights, valuing its currency and calibrating the tide of its textile exports. Also playing into the situation are unmet expectations from the North American Free Trade Agreement. The administration accuses the Democrats and other opponents of putting too much on the back of this trade deal, which would reduce tariffs for many American goods and, the White House says, improve the chances for democracy and free market economics in Latin America. ``Cafta can't be held captive to China or any other trade problem,'' said Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, who has been crisscrossing the country trying to sell the agreement since he took office in January. The administration admits that even in this off-election year, when trade deals have the best chance of passage, it does not have the votes to pass this one. With little sign of progress, both sides notched up the battle last week. President Bush announced that he would play host this week at a high-profile White House meeting. Since his first term, the Bush administration has promoted free trade agreements with Central America and throughout the Western Hemisphere as important components of its foreign policy. ``For too many decades,'' Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a speech before the Council of the Americas, ``U.S. policy toward Central America and the Dominican Republic has oscillated from engagement to disregard. With Cafta, with the permanent engagement that free trade brings, we can break this trend once and for all and we can demonstrate that the United States is committed to the success of all Latin American countries that embrace the challenge of democracy.'' On the other side, centrist Democrats who normally vote for every new trade deal said they opposed Cafta. They said the administration had yet to outline a clear policy aimed at narrowing the $617 billion trade deficit. And they challenged the White House to write trade deals that reflected what they saw as the pressing challenges of globalization in the 21st century. The administration characterizes most of these complaints as protectionism and hopes that Rob Portman, the new United States trade representative and a popular former member of Congress, will be able to smooth the debate and win votes to its side. But Representative Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Trade of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in an interview that Cafta was too small a treaty to warrant such attention. ``Cafta will have a minor impact on our economy; we should be spending time on the big issues like China, agricultural subsidies,'' Mr. Cardin said. ``If I were the administration, I would not like my trade agenda to be judged on Cafta.'' Despite its small weight, many interest groups are deeply divided over Cafta. The Latino groups and politicians who oppose Cafta say that Nafta, the decade-old agreement with Mexico and Canada, failed to fulfill its promise. Representative Hilda Solis, Democrat of California, who describes herself as the only member of Congress of Central American descent, said she opposed Cafta because of Nafta's record, which she said included 750,000 jobs lost in the United States and little progress in improving workers' rights in Mexico. By contrast, Mr. Gutierrez, the commerce secretary, said Nafta was a strong selling point for Cafta. ``I've been associated with Mexico for almost four decades and Mexico is better than it has ever been,'' said Mr. Gutierrez, who started his career in that country after fleeing Cuba as a child. ``It now has its lowest inflation rate, and its growth last year was 4.5 percent.'' But questions about labor rights and lost jobs are staying at the forefront of the trade debate, not retreating. American labor unions say the accord demands better enforcement of existing labor laws in Central America without imposing real sanctions. The administration defends the labor provisions as groundbreaking. Even the countries within Cafta have some noticeable divisions. The ambassadors to the United States from Cafta countries are traveling around the nation to try to persuade members of Congress to vote for the accord. But Beatrice de Carrillo, El Salvador's human rights ombudswoman, said in an interview here that she opposed Cafta because it was not strong enough to stop the destruction of unions. And Costa Rica's president, Abel Pacheco, has said he wants to postpone legislative review until an independent committee finds that it will not harm the poor.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize longtime community resident Robert ``Bob'' Burger for his leadership, determination and dedication as a community leader in Toledo, Ohio. Bob Burger, ``Mr. Neighborhood,'' who recently turned 80 years old, has given unselfishly of his time and ability to help rebuild and revitalize our city, particularly the East Toledo neighborhoods. Beginning in his home community of East Toledo and then extending his reach for community betterment city wide, he started this quest back in 1972 when he founded River East Associates and served as its first president. Mr. Burger also played a major part in the creation of River East Revitalization Corporation in 1974; that organization helped create a comprehensive plan for redevelopment of East Toledo's main business district along Main Street, Front Street and Starr Avenue. Mr. Burger is particularly well known in our community as a director of the Neighborhood Improvement Foundation of Toledo, Incorporated (NIFTI) from 1978 through 1994. He is also well known in our community as a veterans leader. He is currently commander of the Arthur Daly American Legion Post 334 and he previously served as commander of the Veterans of Foreign War Post 2510 in 1974 and 1975. No one of us can ask more than to be given the years to do good for others. Bob Burger's patriotic dedications have yielded exactly that-- and inspired an entire city to take hold of itself and transform it parcel by parcel, block by block into the Toledo for tomorrow. The power of his gentle personality, his kindness, skill, and vision have helped enlarge and build forward a real ethic of community in Toledo. How fortunate we are. Such are his contributions to our community that Toledo City Council has begun the process of renaming a portion of Starr Avenue as ``Bob Burger Avenue,'' which is only appropriate because it is located in the heart of the River East Main business district that Mr. Burger has done so much to promote and advance. For his part in revitalizing one of our great communities, I wish to recognize the contributions of Robert Burger and congratulate him on having a street renamed in his honor. It is particularly appropriate to name a major arterial in his home community in his honor for surely he has been a lifeline to the citizens of the community.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to discuss a vital issue that has not received nearly as much attention as it should, and that is the full accountability of those responsible for the prison abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and likely other abuses in other locations. Last week, 1 year after the shocking pictures of prisoner abuse became public, a military judge declared a mistrial in the case against Private First Class Lynndie England, and I emphasize private first class. England, one of just a few enlisted personnel charged in the case, attempted to plead guilty in order to receive a more lenient sentence. But Judge James Pohl threw her guilty plea out and the court-martial after determining that Private England could not have realized her actions were wrong. Maybe that is because exactly 1 year ago today, Private England told the media that she was ordered by her superiors to pose naked with Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. The case has more questions about Abu Ghraib than it answers, Mr. Speaker. Who was really in charge at Abu Ghraib prison? Who ordered the torture, abuse, humiliation of those prisoners? Why have only a few enlisted personnel, and very low-ranking ones at that, and one Reservist officer been punished? What was the real chain of command? Were contractors involved at any point? And how did their involvement compromise the normal chain of command? According to the Christian Science Monitor, a study by the Army Inspector General, not yet released but reported last week by the media, has exonerated all senior Army officers in Iraq and elsewhere. How about that? Exonerated them all, except the single brigadier general in charge of U.S. prison facilities in Iraq. Why does the Pentagon refuse to look up the chain of command, only trying to place blame at those at the very bottom? Does anyone really believe that these soldiers acted on their own? The Philadelphia Inquirer editorialized: ``No one at the top . . . is blamed for wrongdoing,'' even though the ``climate was fostered from the top down that tolerated, even encouraged, the abuse at Abu Ghraib.'' In February, 2004, the International Red Cross released a report detailing dozens of serious human rights violations that occurred in Iraq between just March and November of 2003, including electrocution, forced nudity, and other lewd sex acts, forcing detainees to wear hoods and more. Who should be held accountable? First, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He is at the top of my list. Personally authorized similar abusive interrogation techniques for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including the use of dogs for intimidation, the removal of clothing, the hooding of prisoners, and ``noninjurious physical contact.'' He ordered several prisoners in Iraq, though not at Abu Ghraib, to be hidden from the International Red Cross so the organization could not monitor their treatment. Are we supposed to believe that such actions at Abu Ghraib were a mere coincidence and not orchestrated by anyone who had the power to order from the top down? How about Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez? He is second on my list. Two Army investigations, one of which he stated he ``failed to ensure proper staff oversight'' of Abu Ghraib, but he has yet to be officially sanctioned, punished, or charged. Third, Major General Geoffrey Miller. According to the Center for American Progress, he was sent to Abu Ghraib to ``Gitmoize'' the place. Under his command, the International Committee of the Red Cross found interrogation techniques at Guantanamo ``tantamount to torture.'' Fourth, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. When he served in that capacity, he advised President Bush that laws prohibiting torture do ``not apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants'' and an interrogation tactic only constituted torture if it resulted in death, organ failure, or serious impairment of bodily functions. And last, but surely not least, President George Bush. The President is not last on this list for no reason. Harry Truman proudly proclaimed ``The buck stops here.'' It would seem this Commander in Chief believes the buck stops far before the Pentagon, White House, or Oval Office. Mr. Speaker, why is Congress receiving more information on these atrocities from the news media than the President or the Department of Defense? It is because they are a part of the culture of abuse that starts with loose slogans like ``Bring 'em on.'' It sends that signal down the chain of command. They were not only operating in an atmosphere created, fostered, and encouraged by top echelon officials at the White House. They were propelled by that very behavior. Mr. Speaker, I include my remaining remarks in the Record. This Congress ought to ask for the truth. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss a vital issue that has not received nearly as much attention as it should--the full accountability of those responsible for the prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and likely other abuses at other locations. Last week, 1 year after the shocking pictures of prisoner abuse became public, a Military Judge declared a mistrial in the case against Private First Class Lynndie England. England, one of just a few enlisted personnel charged in the case, attempted to plead guilty in order to receive a more lenient sentence, Judge James Pohl, a Colonel, however threw out her guilty plea and the court martial after determining that Pvt. England could not have realized her actions were wrong. Maybe that is because exactly 1 year ago today Pvt. England told the media that she was ordered by her superiors to pose naked with Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. This case raises more questions about Abu Ghraib than it answers, Mr. Speaker. Who was really in charge at Abu Ghraib prison? Who ordered the torture abuse/humiliation of these prisoners? Why have only a few enlisted personnel and one Reservist officer been punished? What was the chain of command? Were contractors involved and did their involvement skirt the normal chain of command? According to the Christian Science Monitor, ``for punishment, the military has issued either criminal or administrative charges against 125 soldiers and officers related to 350 cases in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a different story with senior military officers, however. A study by the Army inspector general--not yet released but reported last week by the media--has exonerated all senior Army officers in Iraq and elsewhere except the brigadier general in charge of US prison facilities in Iraq.'' Why does the Pentagon refuse to look up the chain of command to thoroughly investigate and charge high-level military and administration officials, instead focusing efforts on low-ranking enlisted personnel? Does anyone believe that these soldiers acted on their own? That they purposely perpetrated acts that the Pentagon's own report (prepared by General Antonio Taguba) defined as ``sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuse.'' The Philadelphia Inquirer correctly editorialized ``no one at the top--not military officers, certainly not Pentagon civilians--is blamed for wrongdoing. Never mind that a climate was fostered from the top down that tolerated, even encouraged, the abuse at Abu Ghraib.'' In February 2004, the International Red Cross released a report detailing dozens of serious human rights violations that occurred in Iraq between just March and November of 2003. The report maintains some of the abuse was ``tantamount to torture'' and that methods included threats of electrocution, forced nudity and other lewd sex acts, forcing detainees to wear hoods and more. who should be held accountable? First, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is at the top of my list. Secretary Rumsfeld, according to numerous reports, personally authorized similar abusive interrogation techniques for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including the use of dogs for intimidation, the removal of clothing, the hooding of prisoners, and ``non-injurious physical contact.'' He also ordered several prisoners in Iraq, not at Abu Ghraib to be hidden from the International Red Cross so that the organization couldn't monitor their treatment. Now, however, we are supposed to believe that such actions at Abu Ghraib were a mere coincidence and not orchestrated by anyone? Second, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez: Despite two Army investigations, one of which stated he ``failed to ensure proper staff oversight'' of Abu Ghraib, he has yet to be officially sanctioned, punished or charged. Moreover, as the Washington Post reported this week, ``Army intelligence officials in Iraq developed and circulated ``wish lists'' of harsh interrogation techniques they hoped to use on detainees in August 2003, including tactics such as low-voltage electrocution, blows with phone books and using dogs and snakes--suggestions that some soldiers believed spawned abuse and illegal interrogations.'' General Sanchez is known to have approved these rules of interrogation. Third, Major General Geoffrey Miller: According to the Center for American Progress: ``a Guantanamo commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, was sent to Abu Ghraib to ``Gitmoize'' it. Under his command, the International Committee of the Red Cross found interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay are ``tantamount to torture.'' ``Harsh methods'' used at the prison include forced enemas, sleep deprivation and chaining prisoners to chairs and leaving them ``to soil themselves.'' Just weeks after he visited Iraq, the now-infamous abuse occurred at Abu Ghraib. Fourth, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez: Gonzales was instrumental in shaping U.S. policy on the interrogation of prisoners. In the now infamous 1/25/02 memo to the president he wrote, ``the war against terrorism is a new kind of war'' and ``this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.'' Gonzalez also advised President Bush that laws prohibiting torture do ``not apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants'' and an interrogation tactic only constituted torture if it resulted in ``death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions.'' Last but surely not least, President George W. Bush: The President is not last on this list for no reason, Mr. Speaker. Harry Truman proudly proclaimed ``the Buck Stops Here.'' It would seem this Commander in Chief believes the buck stops far before that Pentagon, White House or Oval Office. Mr. Speaker, why is Congress receiving more information on these atrocities from the news media than the President, his staff or the Department of Defense on? Moreover, why does he refuse to acknowledge that either he or his immediate advisers are primarily responsible for the culture of abuse ``Bring em on'' spawned by their reinvention of prisoner interrogation policies? Privates and Corporals in the Army Guard and Reserves are not responsible for the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. They were only operating in an atmosphere created, fostered and encouraged by top echelon at the Pentagon and White House. Why are we not pursuing those truly responsible for these crimes? Harry Truman would fully assume the role of Commander in Chief--not just troop deployment but troop deportment and frankly, the truth. [From the Register-Guard, May 9, 2005] Go Higher on Abu Ghraib: Top Officials Shouldn't Escape Responsibility Sooner or later, Pfc. Lynndie England will be convicted for her role in abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Anyone tempted to shed tears over the prospect of the young Army reservist spending time behind bars need only remember the photographs that showed England leering as she pointed to the genitals of a male captive, and as she led a naked prisoner around by a leash. These images shamed both U.S. critics and supporters of the U.S. invasion. They also had a devastating impact on American efforts to win support in Iraq and throughout the Middle East for the occupation and democratization of Iraq. It was neither surprising nor upsetting then to learn Friday that the government plans to file new charges against England, whose guilty plea was tossed out and her court martial canceled earlier in the week. A military judge, Col. James Pohl, declared a mistrial after Pvt. Charles A. Graner Jr., a former guard at Abu Ghraib, testified that the photos were taken for training purposes. That testimony undermined England's admission that she knew her actions were wrong and her acceptance of responsibility. But England and the the few other enlisted men and women who have faced courts martial in the scandal should not be the only ones to pay a price for what happened at Abu Ghraib. High-level military and administration officials must not be allowed to escape responsibility for a scandal that is far more of their making than of low-ranking soldiers. So far, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, an Army reservist who formerly ran U.S. prisons in Iraq, is the only high-level officer to be disciplined, and she rightly regards herself as a scapegoat. Congress, which abandoned its oversight role during the invasion and its bloody aftermath, should demand an investigation by a bipartisan independent commission similar to the Sept. 11 commission. Instead of starting at the bottom, as the military's whitewashes have done, the panel should start at the top with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who failed to plan for postwar Iraq and then failed to adjust his plans after the insurgency began. Rumsfeld is the reason why there were insufficient numbers of prison guards in Iraq and why they had inadequate training and murky guidelines. Rumsfeld also made the decision to authorize harsh interrogation techniques for detainees at Guantanamo Bay and then to apply those methods in Iraq. Next on the list should be Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who three years ago prepared a legal opinion stating that Geneva Conventions protections for detainees in Afghanistan were ``obsolete.'' That opinion, along with his endorsement of the harsh interrogation methods, contributed to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Also high on the list should be Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who cleared the use of interrogation techniques in Iraq that violated Geneva Conventions. The judge in England's case dismissed charges against her because of testimony indicating others were to blame. England should face justice. But the civilian and military leaders who sent her to Iraq and who bear larger responsibility for the illegal and immoral abuses that occurred there should be held accountable as well.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, Bloomberg News reported today, and I read the quote, ``CAFTA,'' the expansion of NAFTA to all of Latin America, ``will fail in Congress.'' And Peter Morici, a University of Maryland professor and former chief economist for the International Trade Commission, comments: ``CAFTA is in trouble because of frustration with Bush administration inaction on the trade deficit and the Chinese yuan,'' which means that we are not dealing with the difficulties of the exchange rate between not just China and the United States but several other nations. One and a half years ago, a 7-member Congressional delegation traveled to Mexico to examine the modern template for all of these trade agreements that is called NAFTA, the North American, I like to call it ``failed'' Trade Agreement, and the impact it has had on working families and farmers on both sides of that border. The delegation included the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Costello), the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva), the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis), the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), and myself. Our delegation produced a final report entitled ``NAFTA at Ten: Journey to Mexico.'' It is included on the Web site, www.kaptur.house.gov. Mr. Speaker, at the end of my Special Order, I include for the Record a summary of recommendations that our delegation made to fix NAFTA. In that vein, during our trip we met other parliamentarians, including the Honorable Victor Suarez Carrera of Mexico, during that journey. Representative Victor Suarez Carrera is currently serving as a federal representative for the 16th District of Mexico City in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, so he would be our counterpart. He made an eloquent speech saying, I plead with you, Congress of the United States, we the people of Mexico want good trade, not just free trade. He expressed a deep desire to visit our country to tell the American people how NAFTA was not just negatively impacting the people of our country but also the people of Mexico. And so as this Congress considers an expansion of NAFTA to Central America, the CAFTA agreement, to Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, we are honored to welcome Deputy Suarez to the United States. He will be arriving tomorrow with his delegation of Mexican parliamentarians. They will be here Wednesday and Thursday and participate in extensive talks here in Congress on U.S.-Canadian and Mexico Interparliamentary cooperation on NAFTA and CAFTA. They will also travel to other places in the United States. I want to put up a chart to show the difficulty from the United States standpoint. Every single year since NAFTA was signed, rather than the job creation we were promised, the United States has exacted larger and larger trade deficits with both Mexico and Canada. Those numbers were supposed to be exactly the reverse. In Mexico, wages have been lowered. And Mr. Suarez comes from an area called Scala in Mexico, the southeastern region of Mexico, and we were literally in these fields with him talking to the farmers who have been displaced from their land in the nation of Mexico. It was so tragic to hear their stories. The American people need to hear the stories from the people of Mexico. It is not just our workers and farmers that are being hurt; they are being hurt as well. Mr. Suarez is currently president of the Committee for the Center for Studies of Sustainable Rural Development and Food Sovereignty within the Chamber of Deputies. It is important to note he has been a leader and promoter of a movement in Mexico called The Countryside Cannot Take It Any More. He is also active in international peasant movements and in an inner-American network called Agriculture and Democracy. The objectives of our trinational meeting among parliamentarians are to create an intercontinental space for reflection, exchange of ideas and collaboration related to alternative forms of economic integration and trinational development that helps people better their lives rather than reduce their livelihoods and looks ahead to what happens next after NAFTA as we stop CAFTA in its tracks. Our effort is to foster dialogue and exchange between legislators and civil society organizations to further develop ideas for alternatives to the current framework surrounding the flawed free-trade model and to find better ways to achieve trinational development. Another goal is to identify some of the more critical impacts of the 11 years of NAFTA, focusing on an analysis of both national level and sector-specific effects. And finally, we seek consensus among our parliaments on possible future actions that could be taken trinationally among legislators and between organizations and civil society to directly address some of the critical impacts of NAFTA and look ahead to negotiation of a NAFTA-plus agreement. One of the border towns that we visited, and I put up this particular picture, was of women and men living in these tiny shacks who have been displaced from the countryside. Mr. Speaker, we welcome Mr. Suarez Carrera with his colleagues and look forward to the launching of a continental effort to speak out on behalf of farmers and working people of the Americas. NAFTA at Ten: Journey To Mexico [From the Report of the U.S. Congressional Delegation, Nov. 14, 2003] executive summary: nafta and the future of global trade The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is now ten years old. At its heart, it embodies the new heroic struggle of working men and women to gain a foothold in the rough and tumble global economy dominated by multinational corporate giants. Unfortunately, it pits local workers and farmers against global investors. It pits Neustro Maiz, a peasant tortilla co-op in southern Mexico, against ADM, the US grain trade giant. It pits Norma McFadden of Sandusky, Ohio, who lost her middle class job with benefits at Dixon Ticonderoga, against Ana Luisa Cruz of Cuidad Juarez, who earns $7 a day with no benefits. For NAFTA to be credible as a model for future trade agreements, it must be amended. People should be more important than goods. A human face to trade must be negotiated. Without it, the global divide between poverty and wealth will exacerbate. More popular unrest will result from unfair trade, and the social compact so necessary for global cooperation will be shattered. NAFTA is important because it serves as the major template for a new global economic order integrating rich and poor nations through trade and investment. Mexico, Canada and the U.S. were to integrate their economies and, as a result, be better positioned to compete globally. It was touted as the neo-liberal model that would lift the economic condition of all people. All ships, no matter how small, were to be brought forward. But NAFTA worked exactly in the reverse. Affected workers in all three nations saw their wages and working conditions lowered. As capital moved across borders with no social policies in place, NAFTA has triggered an international race to the bottom as even Mexico has lost 218,000 jobs to China, a lower wage environment with a notorious record of human rights abuses. Capital and wealth have become more concentrated in all three nations. The middle class in the U.S. is experiencing a growing squeeze on benefits and job quality. In Mexico, an endless supply of ``starvation wage'' workers was unleashed. Now the Bush Administration is trying to spread the same model to Central America using Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and throughout the rest of the Western Hemisphere with the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). If these agreements are passed, it is clear that only the same can be expected, that is, expanding job washout, underemployment, and trade deficits in the U.S. without improved living standards in the poor countries with whom it trades. A reformed trade model among trading nations is needed that yields rising standards of living for workers and farmers. This must be based on transparent and enforceable rules of law concerning labor, environment and business. Continental sustainable wage and labor standards should be adopted. Trade accords must also incorporate industrial and agricultural adjustment provisions, and currency alignment. An infrastructure investment plan should be negotiated as a core provision of any trade agreement. Complementary systems for education and safe, reliable medical care for all citizens, including the over 9 million immigrants traveling as itinerant labor to the U.S. every year, must be addressed as central concerns of integrated economies. recommendations Policy reforms are essential to amend NAFTA and other trade agreements that have yielded such huge U.S. trade deficits, job washout, and lowered standards of living. A continental assessment of NAFTA should be launched to address its shortcomings An intracontinental parliamentary Working Group on Trade and Working Life in America, comprised of U.S., Mexican, and Canadian members, should be established with the goal of amending NAFTA to address its shortcomings. Such a working group should analyze the results of NAFTA and its impact on workers, farmers, and communities. The Working Group should defIne a sustainable wage standard for workers in each country and a continental labor registration system along with enforceable labor and environmental standards. It would identify the massive continental labor displacements that are occurring, often with no social safety net in place. It would explore options to deal with divergence in education and health as well as currency fluctuations and impact of trade on infrastructure, investment, and migration. It would harmonize inequitable tax systems and augment credit systems for the safe and non-usurious continental transfer of remittances by mobile workers. It would also propose funds in the form of adjustment assistance to cushion continental economic integration. The organization would include as a key component an intracontinental Agricultural Working Committee to address the hardships faced by farmers and farm labor in all three countries. Trade agreements should yield trade balances If NAFTA were working in the interest of the U.S., there would be a trade surplus with Canada and Mexico, as the U.S. exported more than it imported. Exactly the reverse is true. In 2003 the NAFTA trade gap equaled 100 billion--$42 billion with Mexico and $85 billion with Canada. This represents a serious drag on U.S. gross domestic product and a loss of wealth. Indeed the U.S.-NAFTA trade balance with low-wage Mexico as well as Canada has turned decidedly more negative, and worsened each year, contrary to NAFTA's stated aims. When a trade agreement yields major and growing deficits for more than three years, it ought to be renegotiated.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, President Bush invited the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Prince Abdullah, to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and met with him yesterday. Here is a photo that has been on the White House Web site and in many newspapers around the country showing the President and the Prince holding hands. That is a sign of friendship over there in that part of the world. But I was struck by the fact that the focus, of course, was the subject of oil. As we watch what the President said, or at least what was reported, our President is in a position of begging. America begging. America begging a dictatorship to ease up on oil prices. My colleagues might recall the President asked the Saudi prince to take it easy before the election in November, kind of keep prices down a bit, but since the election, they have just skyrocketed. In California, people are paying over $3 a gallon. In Ohio I can tell my colleagues I have paid $2.50, $2.57. The average price they tell us is about $2.24 nationally, with a 43 percent increase since a year ago, and crude oil prices were up Monday about $54 a barrel, up $37 from a year ago. Now, the United States consumes about $7.1 billion worth of petroleum, and two-thirds of it is being imported, Saudi Arabia being the largest supplier. In essence, America is totally dependent. People have to understand this, because until the American people really understand this, we will not change. Every time we buy a tankful of gas, two-thirds of the money we spend goes somewhere else, and it goes to places that are undemocratic. The New York Times reports today, and it has this picture in the paper, about the President's meeting, and it also has an article about Venezuela, which I will submit to the Record. Venezuela provides about 15 percent of the oil that we consume. In fact, I have a chart here that shows from the Middle East where we get about 30 percent of the total supply, with Saudi Arabia being the largest supplier, along with Kuwait, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, and then Venezuela about 15 percent; nearly half of what we consume comes from those regions of the world. America has to understand this, because until the people of the United States understand, this place will not change. If we look at the sad energy bill that passed this Chamber last week, without my support, it lives in the past. It lives in the 20th century, not the 21st century. There is a theory: If you just put more holes in the ground, all problems will be solved. Well, that is not going to happen. We have to think in a different way. Now, Venezuela, as the article in The New York Times today confirms, has become a bit antagonistic toward the United States because we have an administration who is trying to get rid of the President of that country's government. Now, whether you like Venezuela or not, the facts are we get 15 percent of our oil from there, and without that 15 percent, we have to get it from somewhere else, and the prices are going to go up. Now, the President of Venezuela believes that the United States is planning an invasion of his country, and he has threatened to cut these oil sales. It is not a very pretty picture when we look around the world, whether you look at Colombia, Nigeria, Venezuela, the Middle East. So it is not surprising that the President is holding hands with the prince. What is truly dangerous and tragic about this trend is America is not independent. We had a Declaration of Independence at the beginning of the Republic to cut our umbilical cord to Britain for political and economic reasons. But imagine an America that was energy independent; again, where we put all of this money, that is making others rich, in the pockets of producers in this country, starting with the farmers of America who today, within 5 years, could displace 25 percent of our imported petroleum with the use of clean, burning biofuels based in biomass, in ethanol, in biodiesel, soy diesel, fuels that we can produce today on the fields that are lying fallow across this country. Imagine what biogenetics can do to produce greater BTUs per ton of what we can produce. We do not need a new hydrogen age right now; we can use what we have today to displace these purchases. We are not doing it. Imagine, imagine an America that was energy independent; again, where when you went to the gas pump, you enriched your own community, the farmers that live around the communities that you live in, and that the gas pump that you drove up to, you could buy ethanol at E85, or you could buy 100 percent soy diesel. Do my colleagues know, in Ohio you cannot do that. Minnesota has seen the future, Iowa has seen the future. There are some places in this country who have seen the future, but the majority of our people have not seen the future. Renewable biofuels, domestically produced, could directly displace imported petroleum, and our energy bill last week should have done that. Some of us want to live in the 21st and 22nd century; we do not want our President to be holding hands with the crown prince and begging. [From the New York Times, Apr. 26, 2005] Bush and Saudi Prince Discuss High Oil Prices in Ranch Meeting (By Richard W. Stevenson) Crawford, TX, April 25.--President Bush discussed the surge in oil prices with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Monday, but focused on a plan by the Saudis to increase their oil-pumping capacity over the next decade rather than on any short-term efforts to bring prices down. The two leaders talked for three hours here at Mr. Bush's ranch, trying to restore some normality to a relationship that has been tense since the emergence of the role of terrorists from Saudi Arabia in the Sept. 11 attacks. They discussed a variety of issues, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, terrorism, trade and Mr. Bush's call for more democracy in the Middle East, and the men made every effort to portray the relationship as back on track. Mr. Bush even held the crown prince's hand, a traditional Saudi sign of friendship, as he guided Abdullah up the steps through a bed of bluebonnets to his office, the very picture of Saudi-American interdependence. But the focus was on oil prices. Officials from both sides emerged from the meeting to say there was agreement on the value of Saudi Arabia's signaling to global markets that it would push down prices over the long run as demand for energy increased. American officials said they hoped the Saudi policy might put immediate downward pressure on oil prices, even though the expansion plan has been public for weeks. ``A high oil price will damage markets, and he knows that,'' Mr. Bush said as he waited for his guest to arrive. Officials said there was no explicit request by Mr. Bush for short-term steps to bring down rising oil and gasoline prices, which are threatening to take a toll on the economy in the United States and are already pulling down the president's approval ratings. They said that Mr. Bush and other officials had already signaled to the Saudis that they wanted a commitment to pump more oil in the short run, and that last week the Saudi oil minister had publicly expressed a willingness to do so. The officials said the Saudis used the meeting to detail for Mr. Bush the steps they intended to take to cushion the global market from future increases in demand from fast- growing economies like China and India, and from the United States and other industrial nations. Saudi Arabia's plan, which it began discussing publicly weeks ago, calls for spending up to $50 billion to increase its maximum sustainable production capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day by 2009, and to 15 million in the subsequent decade, from about 10.8 million barrels now. The Saudis are currently pumping about 9.5 million barrels a day. Asked whether that plan would have any effect soon on gasoline prices in the United States, Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, told reporters, ``It's hard to say.'' Mr. Hadley added that increasing capacity ``can't help but have a positive downward effect on prices and deal with some of the volatility in the market by assuring people that supply will be available as the economies grow.'' A Saudi official said that Mr. Bush had not requested a short-term production increase and that such an increase would not have any effect on gasoline prices in the United States in any case. The high price of gasoline in the United States, the Saudi official said, was mostly a result of a lack of refining capacity here. ``It will not make a difference if Saudi Arabia ships an extra million or two million barrels of crude oil to the United States,'' said the official, Adel al-Jubeir, a senior adviser to the crown prince. ``If you cannot refine it, it will not turn into gasoline, and that will not turn into lower prices.'' The national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline last week was just under $2.24, up 43 cents from a year earlier. Crude oil prices on Monday were about $54 a barrel, up from $37 a year ago. Saudi Arabia's plans to increase production capacity are politically and geologically sensitive. In the Middle East, the Saudis have been criticized for increasing production to help the United States; the most extreme of those critics has been Osama bin Laden. Some experts, including past and present officials of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, have said the plan may be too optimistic because of geological complexities in the oil fields and challenges in finding enough technology and labor. The crown prince arrived at the Bush ranch late Monday morning from Dallas, where he had met Sunday with Vice President Dick Cheney, who was briefed on the Saudi production plan. Reflecting the importance of the meeting to the administration, Mr. Bush was joined for the meeting here by Mr. Cheney; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Mr. Hadley; Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; and Fran Townsend, the White House's homeland security adviser. The atmosphere was considerably less tense than during Abdullah's last visit, three years ago to the day, and the two sides cited progress on a variety of fronts. Saudi officials said only technicalities remained in negotiating a trade deal with the United States, a big step toward Saudi Arabia's goal of joining the World Trade Organization. The two governments agreed to work toward making it easier for Saudi students and military officers to study and train in the United States. Mr. Hadley said the Saudis had made ``real good progress'' in fighting terrorism. Ms. Rice said that the Saudis and the United States had a ``common agenda'' when it came to promoting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians and that she had discussed with Abdullah the need for the Saudis to provide financial support for the Palestinians in Gaza once the Israelis pull out this summer.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the Reverend Dr. John Roberts of Toledo for his 40 years of service in Jesus Christ. Our community will join his congregation in celebration of this milestone on April 3, 2005. Born in Bryant, Mississippi on March 9, 1927 to George and Melvina Roberts, John E. Roberts came to Toledo, Ohio in 1944. Here he attended Libbey and Scott High Schools. When Indiana Avenue Baptist Church was organized in 1946 he was there, and has been active in the church ever since. Prior to his ordination in 1964, Pastor Roberts served his church as custodian, Sunday school teacher, choir member, Trustee Board Secretary, and Deacon. After receiving his ordination, Pastor Roberts preached his first service at the church he helped to organize on the 3rd Sunday of January 1965. Even while Pastor, he pursued his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Religious Education degrees in 1975, his Master of Theology in 1984, and his Doctorate in Biblical Theology in 1985. All of this, in addition to working a second job in order to contribute to the financing of the church structure. Pastor Roberts truly has led his congregation by example, and he acknowledges that his achievements were obtained under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Pastor Roberts' tenure at Indiana Avenue Baptist Church has been most noteworthy. Under his leadership, the Christian Board of Education was organized and so were the Junior Church, Couples Fellowship, Singles Fellowship, Widows Fellowship, Recreation Department, Youth Department and Young Adult Department. He has ministered, counseled, taught and led a congregation numbering in the thousands. It has been noted that Pastor Roberts ``has opened the eyes of many who were stumbling in spiritual darkness and led them to the light through the study of the Word of God.'' His theological mastery is complemented by an extraordinary sense of humor and good nature that lifts the spirits of all people whom he encounters. He is a man of God walking among all the people. A strong and much respected community leader, Pastor Roberts is also an active participant in the Toledo Public Schools PTA, International Ministerial Alliance, Baptist Ministers Conference, and NAACP Lifetime Member. He has also served on the Boards of the Urban League, the J. Frank Troy Senior Citizens Center, and the Frederick Douglass Community Center and served on the Interracial Coalition Committee and the co- chaired the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Task Force Council. His opinion and counsel are highly valued, and he has been asked by civic leaders both past and present to serve on many special commissions. Despite his community and church commitments, Pastor Roberts' first devotion is to his wife and family. He credits much of his success to his wife, Bernice, to whom he has been married for 55 years. Together they have raised three sons and have five grandchildren. It is impossible to characterize the life of so great a man into a few short lines of a Record entry. Perhaps no finer tribute may be made than that of the belief of those who know him best that Pastor Roberts is ``a man sent by God to lift men's faith, hope, and love.''

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this month our community celebrates the fiftieth jubilee of Reverend I.J. Johnson is the pastor of St. Mark's Missionary Baptist Church in Toledo, Ohio. Amazingly, Reverend Johnson entered the ministry at age twelve. By nineteen, he began pastoring in his home state of Alabama. He received his Bachelor of Theology degree from Easonian Baptist Seminary in Birmingham, Alabama, and served four churches until coming to Ohio in 1955. In July of that year, he was invited by Dr. Israel Walker to conduct a revival at St. Mary's Baptist Church. During this visit he met the woman who would become his wife. On August 26, 1958, Reverend Johnson and Mother Betty Rae Johnson were married. Together they raised four children: Reverend C.L. Johnson, Reverend Michael Johnson. Denisee Williams and Angela Taylor. In October of 1955, Pastor Johnson founded and organized St. Mark's Missionary Baptist Church. Started with just three members, the church grew over the half-century to more than 2,000 souls. Enjoying a well-earned reputation as a spiritual leader, Pastor Johnson has been invited to conduct revivals in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Tennessee. All of this in addition to his ministry at St. Mark's. He has established a yearly fellowship with Historical First Baptist Church of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 1981, Pastor Johnson invited Dr. Martin Luther King Sr. to St. Mark's, at which time the first album recorded by the church choir was dedicated. The album was entitled ``Our Day Will Come.'' Many of our area ministers count Pastor Johnson as mentor. Perhaps the greatest testament to his nurturing ability is the fact that both of his sons are now preachers in their own right. Not only ministers, but many in our community have been beneficiaries of his counsel. Truly a community leader, Pastor Johnson served as president of the Baptist Ministers Conference for eight years. Other associations include the Fairside Community Organization, Northwestern Ohio Missionary Baptist Association, Lucas County Mental Health Board, Interracial Interfaith Committee, Evangelical Board of the National Baptist Convention, and NAACP. A welcome advisor, Reverend Johnson has also been specially recognized by our area's elected leaders. Reverend Johnson's charismatic leadership, dynamic example, personal spirituality, and careful teachings have brought many people to live their lives in the steps of Jesus Christ. He embodies God's teachings as written in Matthew, 4:19; ``Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.''

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, it is definitely in Texas. And we want to be able to use that fuel in a new way. So we thank the gentleman for allowing the amendment to be offered, I would hope that we would get favorable consideration by the committee or when we come to the floor for a vote. So we would urge consideration and support of the Kaptur-Kucinich amendment, which is future-oriented, budget-neutral, and helps move America to a new biofuel age.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I would just say, along with what the gentleman has stated for the record, there are over 140 million cars and 85 million trucks on our highways. And today 3,300,000 of those cars and trucks all already are on our highways running on 85 percent ethanol. If we but use our fleets in a wiser way and help transition to these new fuels, we can make a difference in the pockets of every single American and leave a better world to our children. Today, there are 187,000 retail locations in our country from which we purchase our fuels, but only 400 stations across 38 States sell E- 85. I want to buy. I just said to the head of GM, who came here to Washington this week, to the Auto Caucus event, I said, Sir, I want to buy a GM Malibu powered by ethanol. Do you sell it? And even if I bought it, could I go to Toledo and buy the fuel? He said, ``I do not think I have that yet.'' I said, ``Can you go back to Detroit and figure that one out for me?'' I know that the Jeep Liberty that is rolling off the lines in Toledo today has, for the first time in U.S. history, a 5 percent biodiesel blend as original equipment, called B-5. Someday we are going to get that up to B-20, and the farms in Ohio that surround the cities that some of us live in are going to provide that fuel. And that money is going to be going in their pockets. We are going to have a new fuel- based age in this Nation. I get pretty excited about this, because I have seen the future and it is in Ohio, and it is in Iowa, and it is in Nebraska.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the able gentleman from Cleveland and say that the north coast of Ohio is well represented here today as we help America, through the Kucinich-Kaptur amendment, take another small step for humankind toward energy independence. This program is budget neutral. All it does is it allows for 30 communities in our country to adapt alternatively fueled vehicles in their public fleets, as well as some of the infrastructure to support it. It allows for those competitive grants to be in the amount up to $15 million as opposed to $20 million. So we reduce the actual amount, and we increase the number of communities, so we at least have an additional 30. It allows greater energy security, greater economic security and, without a doubt, greater environmental security. I want to say thank you to the gentleman, who has been such a leader on this issue, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich), for Cleveland and for our country. It is important to think about new ways of doing things, to close the book on the 20th century, the petroleum age, and move toward a new energy age for America and the world. Sixty-two percent of what powers our vehicles today is imported, that is, two-thirds. This is not a sustainable position for the United States, particularly when spot markets in oil are ringing in at over $50, and $55 a barrel. Every family in America is feeling the pain of this. So this program will help us move forward millions of vehicles in the public realm that can help us transition to a new age of energy independence. I am very sensitive to the gentleman's time and do not want to impose.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The over-reliance of the United States on imported petroleum creates a major strategic vulnerability for our Nation, with nearly half the energy supply of our country now imported, and that reliance grows every day. My amendment has a goal of taking a small step toward energy independence in the following way: we have something called a Strategic Petroleum Reserve managed by the Department of the Interior, which has in that reserve about 700 million barrels of oil, allowing us to maintain a temporary shield from increased costs on oil. The purpose of my amendment only allows, it does not require, the Secretary of Energy the discretion of including ethanol, biodiesel, and other alternative fuels in the Strategic Fuel Reserve. So it takes the word ``petroleum'' out, although petroleum will remain the major fuel; but it offers some encouragement, albeit mild, to try to get us to think differently about a new future for our country. Every one of us has that responsibility, including the Secretaries of the Interior and Energy. This amendment is neutral. If the Secretary decided to secure alternative fuels, it would be paid for by the exchange or sale of crude oil from the existing reserve. Ethanol and other bio-based fuels are two of the ways in which America can truly become more self-sufficient in fuel production and usage. This chart shows, just over the last 20 years or so, our petroleum consumption and how much more of it is imported, to now well over half. It is projected in another 15 years our imported petroleum will rise to 75 percent. By 2050, most easily drawn-down reserves in the world will have been drawn down, not just by our country but by nations like China, for example, which are using more and more petroleum every year. We simply cannot live in the 20th century any more. It is now the 21st century. If we look where we are importing our crude reserves, they are coming largely from the Middle East, followed by Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, many places that have difficulties politically. Increasing use of renewable fuels will result in significant economic benefits to our Nation as well. For example, biodiesel production is dramatically increasing, going from about 5 million gallons in 2001 to five times that much this past 2003. And Congress expanded the existing reserve in 2000 to include the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve. There is absolutely no reason that biodiesel cannot ultimately become part of that reserve and help us to transition off our increasing reliance on petroleum. The use of biofuels makes environmental sense, allowing us to better preserve our natural environment. Biodiesel, for example, contains no sulfur, or aromatics associated with air pollution, and the use of something like biodiesel provides a 78.5 percent reduction in CO2 emissions when compared to petroleum diesel. Currently the SPR, the reserve, contains a number of domestic and foreign crude oils, and those fuels are stored separately. Adding additional storage capacity for other fuels could be planned very easily by the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of the Interior. The National Farmers Union, for example, is supporting this effort. People across this country really know America has to change. This is one small baby step. It is just encouraging language. It asks that those responsible for the current strategic reserve think more creatively, take the time to look at these alternative fuels, and help put America on a more energy-independent course. Without question, the farmers across this country need new value added; and with the price of oil skyrocketing, and it really will not go down, it has not gone down in the last 30 years if you look at the progression of oil pricing in the spot markets, for example. And now these fuels are competitive. There are many States taking the lead. Take Minnesota, take Iowa, take Nebraska, take the Dakotas. There are many places that have seen the future and are developing it. I think we here in Congress should respond to that inventiveness and that desire of the American people to invent their way to a new fuel future. And, in fact, when you come to my part of the country and you look across the fields, you can see part of America's future in the fields of the future, and fuels of the future that will be produced on them and are being produced on them more and more every day. Why should the Departments of Energy and the Interior not help us to move America forward. I would ask for favorable consideration of this amendment. And I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) for allowing the amendment and the Rules Committee for granting it.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. If the gentleman and my colleagues could read the amendment, it does not prescribe any format for the Secretaries of Energy or Interior to use in creating this reserve. In fact, the reserve could actually be stored in the form of the raw material which is processed very easily and can be done immediately because the processing technology is on line. So it literally could be the type of Commodity Credit Corporation booking that we use for other grains in our country and other material that we use in refining of alcohol-based fuels. So it does not say to the Secretary that they have to buy it in this form or store it in a given form. They could actually store the grain and use the powers of the Commodity Credit Corporation, for example, to broker those reserves. But nonetheless it would be available in the country. We are talking about a process that actually is simpler than refining petroleum and refining crude and one that is much less dirty. So if I could beg the gentleman as we move towards conference, perhaps, I would like to move forward with this amendment in some form to find a manner in which it can work and with which the gentleman is comfortable. National Farmers Union, April 19, 2005. Hon. Marcy Kaptur, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Congresswoman Kaptur: On behalf of the over 260,000 members of the National Farmers Union, we write in strong support of your amendment to H.R. 6 which will establish renewable fuel reserves as an important foundation to lessening our dependence on foreign oil. Thanks to your leadership your legislation can help store renewable fuels in case of possible future consumer disruptions. We applaud your efforts and we want to work closely with you on making this amendment part of H.R. 6. We look forward to working with you on this issue and commend you for your dedication to renewable fuels. Sincerely, David J. Frederickson, President.