Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the Thomas bill so we can ultimately bring up the Rangel-Levin bill which takes an important step to restore this body's constitutional mandate in trade making so that trade regimes lift all people. Why pass another same-old same-old trade bill that will bring us more lost jobs, more bankrupt farmers with the lowest prices in history with growing trade deficits every single year. Fast Track procedures simply do not work. This Congress has the ability to write trade agreements that leaves no sector behind, recognizes worker rights, and a clean safe environment for each of the world's citizens. Put a human face on globalization; vote ``no'' on the Thomas bill and let us meet our constitutional obligations in this Chamber to write trade bills that work for everyone.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I have a story I want to put on the record. I know President Bush is very high in the polls, and I suppose one would be struck by lightning if they were to try to say anything that presents a different truth, but I have to present that truth because I personally experienced it. As my colleague knows, a few months ago, before the terrorist attacks here in our country, President Bush brought the President of Mexico to my district, the Ninth District of Ohio. And one of the reasons he was brought in there was because, I am sure, President Bush would like to learn more about why people in our region, just like people in every region of America, oppose these trade agreements. So he brought in President Fox, and I had a chance to ride out there on Air Force One with both Presidents and had a chance to talk to them. I had asked the White House, and I presented President Bush with a letter on the airplane confirming what I had called about, saying, you know, Mr. President, you and I do not agree on NAFTA, and many, many, millions of people have been hurt by NAFTA. But we have to figure out a way to improve it and to make it better. I would be willing to travel with you from any point in America where jobs have been lost to the places in Mexico where those jobs have been transplanted, and to talk to the workers in both locations with both Presidents and with Members of Congress and to try to figure out how do we work together as a continent in order to treat workers with the respect they deserve, whether in the industrial workplace or the agriculture hinterlands. When we got on the airplane and he talked to us, I said, Mr. President, I proposed the trip and that we amend NAFTA to create an organization on an inter-continental basis for working life in the Americas. I said we could have a forum to deal with some of these poignant and deeply difficult and complex labor and environmental issues. He said, no, he did not have a chance to read the letter I sent his staff a week before. I said, Mr. President, here is another copy of the letter. And I handed another copy to President Fox, and I had sent it to the Mexican embassy. President Bush said, It looks kind of thick. Is it single spaced? That is what he said to me. I said it is single spaced, but the paper is folded. That may be why it looks a little thick. I said, I would appreciate if you would read it. He said it is single spaced, I have to use my glasses, and I cannot do it now. I said, Mr. President, I appreciate an answer because I do not think anything that I am proposing is very radical. I did not get an answer from the White House. I can say September 11 happened and the world shifted, but I did receive a reply from President Fox. Last night at the White House Christmas party, I occasioned to talk to President Bush, wishing him and his wife and all those who are involved in the war God's blessing. I said, Mr. President, I do have to mention one item: you never did answer me on the letter from the airplane; remember we talked about it? He said oh, yes, and he kind of winked and smirked a little bit, and he said it must have gotten lost in the shuffle. It was not even said with seriousness, and it really hurt me because that is how workers are being treated. They are being lost in the shuffle, in this country, in Mexico, in places like Bangladesh. We are not fully conscious; we are not paying attention. We do not want to pay attention to the economic system that is hurting so many and not treating them with the human dignity that they deserve. So much of world history is related to economics. I would say most wars, 74 percent, 75 percent of the reason we get in wars relates to economics. The history of this country, the Civil War, the pains of which and the scars of which we are still healing today, what did it have to do with? It had to do with whether or not we would extend the plantation system of the South to the West, and the plantation system with the slave labor with the kind of indentured servitude that characterized economic activity up until that point. It was about economics. Even now to a great extent, in my opinion, the unrest and the hatred of so many in the Middle East toward us is due to the fact that because we have been trading with undemocratic systems that have not shared that vast wealth with the ordinary people of those countries, figured out some more representative system of government where all parts of the country could have roads and hospitals and children would have the ability to go to school, not just because you are the king's cousin or because you are Sunni as opposed to a Shiite, that there are divisions that do not get full representation, economics underpins so much of the trouble in the world today. Mr. Speaker, I guess that is the reason we fight so hard because we know if we do not do it right in the first place, we are going to get a reaction down the road that will be like a boomerang.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I hope that every worker in America who has lost their job because of one of these trade agreements will write the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) or myself, will tell us who they are because we are going to keep a list of who they are because there are now millions and millions of Americans who have been hurt by these misguided trade agreements. I heard some of the prior speakers saying how great this would be for trade and it is going to create all these great exports and cheap imports, and the truth of the matter is that is not happening either way. First of all, in terms of exports, take Argentina and beef. Argentina now exports more beef before this authority even voted on, and wait until after it is passed, than we export to them. We are already a net importer of beef from Argentina.

Ms. KAPTUR. While the gentleman was talking about democracy and about trying to have a trade regime that uses the power of the democratic republics of the world and the free enterprise systems with the rule of law that have developed over two centuries, and then invite in the nations that would wish to advance, to have a system that would use the strength of the democratic republics and bring the others forward rather than pit them against one another, which is what is happening now, I could not help but think of one of the opponents who often comes to the floor and speaks against the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) and myself, who usually says, well, we have got to trade because trade brings freedom. Trade brings freedom. They use that phony argument. And I say, yes, we can have free trade among free people, but if we look at what is happening in the Middle East right now, there is not any set of nations that we have traded more with as a country than Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Why? Because we are totally and stupidly dependent on imported petroleum. Now, if trade had brought freedom, they would have the most lively democracies in the world. But trillions and trillions of our oil dollars, every time we go to the gas pump and we buy petroleum, we buy gasoline, half of the money we spend goes offshore to places like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. And now they are drilling in Sudan.

Ms. KAPTUR. The gentleman raises an excellent point because those are not real exports. They are U-turn goods. The gentleman is right. They are industrial tourists. They do not really create real wealth. They are merely there to try to exploit cheap labor, and this is happening all over the world, and the American people know it intuitively because when they go shop, it does not matter what one buys, it is all made someplace else. In fact, trying to find something made in America is now an exception, rather than the rule; and that is draining out of our economy in a very invisible way to the ordinary person's experience the money that should be there for health benefits, the money that should be there for retirement benefits, the money that should be available in local regions to support the construction of schools, all these tax abatements that are being handed out left and right in all the 50 States to try to attract some of this investment that is moving to other locales around the world. They are not paying their fair share of property taxes and of taxes for education and all of the sudden education is being Federalized simply because local regions do not have the money to pay for the schools. There are lots of costs for what we are seeing; and one of the biggest costs is America's image abroad, and let me give one example. Recently, I had a most compelling set of visitors in my district from the nation of Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in the world, with over a hundred million people; and these were women workers. They did not speak English, but they came with a translator, and what did they do? Every hour, each of them makes 320 hats, ball caps and T-shirts, for places like Ohio State, the University of Michigan, all of our Big 10 schools, all these football teams and all around our country. For each hat that these women make, they are paid one and a half cents. When those hats land in the United States, according to U.S. customs forms, the total cost of the material, the labor and the transportation is $1. The average cost of one of those caps at any one of our universities is over $17. So you ask yourself, who is making the money? And what is going on with this kind of system is that the very big investors around the world, and they have always been there, it was true for women in the textile industry from the time of the Lancashire Mills in England, investment moves to an area where they can access cheap labor, and it is up to those in political life to hold them accountable for the communities in which they exist. They have no automatic right to be here. We allow them in our system to be here, and they had best respect the political system we have created because it is not continued by magic. It is continued because of the set of values and beliefs that we hold as a people. With a nation like China with over $1.250 billion people, and we only have 270 million people in this country, when there is this kind of trade deficit, and that is what this chart represents, U.S. imports from China exceed our exports there by 6 times, by 6 times, the amount of trade deficit in any 1 year that we are amassing with China is over $50 billion annually. That is $50 billion that is escaping communities in this country, workers' paychecks, workers' benefit checks, the taxes that would go into supporting our educational system, and it is getting worse. The trade agreement that was signed with China has not made our trade accounts improve. They have only gotten worse every single year. So whether it is Mexico, whether it is China, whether it is Bangladesh, whether it is Argentina, it does not matter. The system is the same system. I hear President Bush talk a whole lot about evildoers. People can be evildoers, but also economic systems and political systems can be evildoers. They can do harm in a very, very real way. Those women from Bangladesh came to my community and told me that they had to work 7 days a week, these young girls, 18, 19, and 20 years old. They would work 12-15 hours a day, sometimes 20 hours a day, sometimes 48 hours straight because they had to meet their production quota or their company would lose its contract. They would literally curl up and sleep under their sewing machine for 2 or 3 hours, and then they would get up and sew again. None of them were beyond the age of 29, and one girl was fired because she got a gray hair and they said, she is getting old, get rid of her. They are treated like dirt. This is not the image that I want our country to portray internationally. And to most Americans, these are hidden activities that they never get a chance to see. But I hope retailers, some of whom are listening tonight, please, develop some conscience. Your actions have consequence. There is a moral order here that we ought to uphold. And the economic system that you are a party to does not treat people with respect. It is not just commodities you are buying, you are buying a chain of production, and there are people at every juncture along the chain, and the invisible hand should not be invisible any more. If I might, I wanted to share again a chart here that shows the long history of our country and what has been happening with these trade deficits year after year after year, lopping probably about 25 percent off of our economic prowess in any given year because of the extent of it, over $300 billion. And back in, oh, 1974, and then moving into the 1980s, we began to move into deficit cumulatively with all these countries, and it has gotten worse and worse and worse every single year. Now, some people talk about the budget deficit, where the amount of tax revenue that we take in as a country is not enough to pay for all our bills, our defense expenditures, our Social Security, and all the other things we have to pay for. Well, there is another deficit, and that is the trade deficit. It is not talked about a whole lot, and people often confuse the two, but the trade deficit is another number that is terribly important. Because when we have this deficit, how do we finance it? When other countries and companies make money off this marketplace, where do they put those earnings? They have been buying the U.S. Government debt. When I first came to Congress, 12 percent of our debt was owned by foreign interests. In other words, every year we would have to pay them interest on the loans that they would make to us. Today, that has gone up to 42 percent of our Federal debt is owned by foreign interests. And every year we have to pay those interests, over $300 billion a year now, to pay for their loans to us. So for the younger generation, this is not a stable situation in which to leave the Republic. If anything goes wrong in the international marketplace, collapse in Japan, collapse in Germany, whatever might happen in terms of the economy, the question becomes: Where are other investors going to be putting their money? How secure is the United States? Politically, yes, we are very secure; but economically we have some pretty big gaping holes in our hull and we best take care of it. I think that people like my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), and myself, those who will oppose us this week will say, well, you are not for trade. That is absolutely wrong. That is not even the issue. Those people who do not want to talk about the real issue will say that against us. But, in fact, we represent the northern part of Ohio. There is no part of America that trades more and is more dependent on free enterprise and the free market than northern Ohio, because we are heavily automotive, we are heavily agricultural, we have major ports, seaports, we have 24-hour-a-day air service out of our communities. We are the major spine of industrial America and also the crossroads of the Midwest. Seventy-four percent of the American population is within a day's drive from my district alone. We are centrally located in our country. We must trade. But we want to trade in a system that respects democratic rights and freedom and the right of ordinary people to better themselves by the work that they do.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for allowing me to join him this evening in our great efforts to defeat Trade Promotion Authority and move toward more democratic trade agreements for the world.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), the very able Member from the Lorain, Ohio region, for asking me to join him in this Special Order this evening. I do not want to consume an undue amount of his time, and want to say that we are a better country and world because of his involvement and leadership on this issue in the area of trade, jobs, the betterment of the working conditions of America's workers and workers around the world. It is my great pleasure to join him this evening. I am reminded of the former Governor of Texas, Ann Richards, who used to always say, ``You can put lipstick on a pig and call it Monique, but it is still a pig.'' In thinking about what is called Trade Promotion Authority, I am reminded of the trade debates we have had here in the Congress where the administration always changes the name. We know it is Fast Track. They tried to do that to us before where they bring a trade measure before the Congress and we have no opportunity to amend it. Through the Committee on Rules, they take away the constitutional rights of this Congress to amend and to involve itself in trade-making. It is right in the Constitution. Pick up a copy of it and read it. So Fast Track basically handcuffs the Congress of the United States and takes away our constitutional power to make the trade laws for this Nation, because it says any president can negotiate an agreement with 59 other countries and not have to negotiate with us. Just bring it up here and try to fast track it through. So when that ran into trouble, and the gentleman might recall this, when we became involved with China, they could not call it Fast Track. They had something called Most Favored Nation. They could not use Most Favored Nation, so then they changed the name. They said we will call it Normal Trade Relations with China. Well, no relations with China are normal. We are not dealing with a country that even recognizes any democratic rights, no worker rights, no religious rights, corruption at every level, state-owned companies, prison labor. And they want to have normal trade relations. So they changed the name. Now we are back to, we had the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA; like a treaty, and we were not allowed to amend. It was either up or down inside here, and I will talk about that in a second. Now they are talking about this Fast Track agreement for all of Latin America, not just Mexico, but adding Brazil and Argentina and a lot of other countries; but they do not want to call it Fast Track. No, we cannot call it what it really is. No amendment by Congress to a trade agreement negotiated by the President. We are going to call it Trade Promotion Authority. That sounds like homogenized milk. Who can be against that?

Ms. KAPTUR. The gentleman raises an excellent point; and if there are farmers listening to us this evening, this Member of Congress' opinion is that the answer for increasing income to America's farmers does not lie in the export market. Rather, it lies in recapturing the market that we have lost here at home and moving our production to higher value-added products, including the production of new fuels. If one looks at what is going on in Minnesota, with the corn growers in Minnesota, they have raised the price they are getting per bushel by the production of ethanol in southeastern, southwestern Minnesota by one dollar. In other words, they are at a low per bushel cost, about a $1.65, which is lower than we have in Ohio. They have actually added a dollar, not through exports, but through producing for the people in their own State; and we have to look toward new uses of agricultural product by our consumers here in this country; and we here at the Federal level, including our Department of Agriculture, our Department of Energy, have to help our farmer reposition in an international marketplace in which they have been forced to become the low-price producers, and they are not able to make ends meet. They have got it backwards. We ought to be helping our farmers here at home invest here in order to recapture new markets in value-added markets here at home. And I wondered if I just might put some facts on the record because they are so staggering they often get lost in the debate, but they are important to talk about. Let us talk about Mexico, and a lot of us were here and fought against NAFTA. It actually broke my heart because I knew how many people would be displaced here at home, and in Mexico; the wages had been cut in half. They had been cut in half. So one can ask who is making the money off a system where workers like Phillips workers in Ohio, thousands of them, lose their jobs and those jobs are moved to Mexico and the people down there, their wages have been cut in half. So who is making the money off this? That is the real invisible hand. That is the invisible hand that we need to identify. If one looks at the U.S. trade balances with Mexico, prior to NAFTA's passage, the black bars represent trade balances, we had a trade surplus with Mexico. That means we sent them, sold them, more than they sold us. The minute NAFTA was signed, our trade balance began to turn into trade deficits. That means they are selling us more than we are selling them. That is a negative on the international trade ledger; and it is a very, very serious one. I wanted to point out a couple of other points. It is not only a deficit. It is a growing huge deficit. Prior to NAFTA's passage in 1993, we had a $51.7 billion surplus with Mexico. That has now turned into a $24 billion annual record deficit. With Canada, which was also a party to NAFTA, we had before NAFTA a problem already. We had a $10 billion trade deficit with Canada. Guess what, since NAFTA passed we have a $50 billion trade deficit with Canada, the worst in the history of this continent. So NAFTA has really had a reversal of fortune for our country and in one very important sector, and I just want to look at the automotive industry for a second. They said this would be just terrific for jobs in America; we would create all these jobs. What we are doing is parts are being sent down to Mexico from this country, things are being done to them, they are being stamped, they are being bent, they are being this and that. They are put in cars that are sent then from Mexico to the United States. So prior to NAFTA's passage, we already had a stream of production where production was being relocated from our country not to sell cars to Mexico's consumers, because they do not earn enough to buy them, but they back-doored the production into Mexico in order to pay the workers almost nothing and then send those cars up here. In fact, the most popular car, the PT Cruiser, PT Cruiser costs about $10,000 to make. Not a single one of those PT Cruisers is made in the United States of America. Every single one of them is made in Mexico, and when one goes down to Mexico, how many Mexicans do we see driving PT Cruisers? We do not see any. Why? They cannot afford them. They are sent up here, and the amount of automotive trade has just tripled between Mexico and the United States. Those are jobs that used to be here. They are now being made in Mexico, and our trade deficit in automotive has just exploded. What it is, it is the relocation of production. So that is NAFTA, that is Mexico, and Trade Promotion Authority. We are going to see the same with Brazil, the same with Argentina, any country simply because they do not have systems of governance, and their economic systems are not developed in a way that ordinary working people can benefit from this kind of investment.

Ms. KAPTUR. I would be pleased to yield to the gentleman.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, that is correct and the reason that the public does not support any of these is because they have been hit directly. That means they have lost their jobs. In this country, ask the Brachs Candy workers in Chicago where their jobs are moving, already to Argentina, because of the way in which sugar is produced in Argentina, and Brachs uses a lot of sugar. So they cannot have farmers producing sugar, and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) talked a lot about foreign policy in agriculture; but because they can have plantation style sugar production, where workers earn nothing, where there are no environmental standards, where one does not have to dispose of field waste in an environmentally responsible way, and then companies like Wal-Mart, the largest purchaser of Brachs Candy, can set the price it wants. That is what is going on in the world. Ask the workers at Phillip's Electronics in Ottawa, Ohio, whose jobs are being moved to Mexico; ask the workers at Fruit of the Loom in Mississippi. One can go State by State, region by region; and one can see the outsourcing of manufacturing and of agricultural jobs in this country, and it is the reason that the census bureau and all the income statistics that have just come out have shown that the wages of ordinary Americans for the last 10 years have not risen. When one discounts for inflation, people have been running in place and falling behind and losing their benefits, as the workers at Enron just did as it went bankrupt this week and they lost their 401(k) plans and lost everything that they had worked for. This trade regime that has been set in place, that disempowers this Congress to represent our constituents has produced an economic policy that is drumming down the middle class in this country and forcing people around the world to work for almost nothing. I would be pleased to yield.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield on that point?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) mentioned my name.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this rule which fails to make the Obey homeland security amendment in order. Just listen to the words of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson who said, ``Am I satisfied with the food inspection we are doing? No, I am more fearful about this than anything else.'' The Obey amendment would provide the agency 10 percent of the resources that it needs to meet the food inspection requirements of this country. Right now we inspect less than 1 percent of what comes over our border. Our Nation's food safety needs are real and compelling, and the risks from imported food products are real and compelling. We must do the right thing to protect our food supply and to help ensure food safety for all of our people. This rule denies us the opportunity to vote on the Obey substitute. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this evening, as our Marines are on the ground in Afghanistan, I would like to posit that the United States is engaged in more than a war. Indeed, we are engaged in the middle of a revolution. Today, Thomas Friedman, New York Times News Service, wrote an editorial entitled ``Shedding the Veil of bin Laden,'' which I will submit for the Record, and I will only read a small part of it. Mr. Friedman is traveling in that part of the world, in the United Arab Emirates, and he says: ``Over coffee the other day here in the gulf, an Arab friend confided to me something that was deeply troubling to him. He said, My 11-year-old son thinks bin Laden is a good man. For Americans, Osama bin Laden is a mass murderer. But for many young Arabs, bin Laden, even in defeat, is still Robin Hood. What attracts them to him is his sheer defiance of everything young Arabs and Muslims detest,'' Friedman goes on, ``their hypocritical rulers, Israel, U.S. dominance, and their own backwardness.'' He then goes on to quote Steven Cohen, the Middle East analyst, who says, ``We in America can't just go on looking at the Arab world as a giant gas station, indifferent to what happens inside. Because the gas is now leaking and all around people are throwing matches. Every day,'' he says, ``I see signs that this war of ideas is possible.'' And, indeed, we are involved in a war of ideas. I would like to commend again the book ``Sacred Rage'' by Robin Wright, as a very important contribution to our own understanding of the revolution in which we are engaged. In 1986, when this book was first published, and is now being updated, the author, Robin Wright, quotes Sajib Salom, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, who said, ``The growth of Islamic fundamentalism is an earthquake.'' She recounts from her own personal experience living in the Middle East the turning point of this revolution, centering it in Iran. Of course, the government that the United States of America had supported collapsed in Iran in 1979, the Shah of Iran deposed, something that the United States had not anticipated. And, in fact, his government at that time, serving as policeman for the entire gulf region. Well, shortly thereafter, in March of 1982, there was a huge conference in Tehran, where some 380 men with various religious and revolutionary credentials met at the former Hilton conference ballroom. Their goal was to help to create the ideal Islamic government. As the government of Iran switched from a monarchy to a theocracy, they had many declarations that came out of that seminar, and she recounts this going back to the mid 1980s. The conclusions of the seminar in some ways were vaguely worded and riddled with rhetoric, but revolutions are that way, and Islamic militants, mainly Shi'a but including some Sunnis, and more recently even more of them, would launch a large-scale offensive to cleanse the Islamic world of the Satanic Western and Eastern influences that they viewed as hindering their progress, and they agreed to the following back in the early 1980s: First, that religion should not be separated from politics; secondly, that the only way to achieve true independence, true independence, was to return to Islamic roots; third, there should be no reliance on superpowers or other outsiders, and the region should get rid of them; and, fourth, they recommended that the Shi'a should be more active in getting rid of foreign powers. Dr. Marvin Zonis, at that time the director of the Middle East Institute at the University of Chicago, had a stunning comment about the Psychological Roots of Shiite Muslim Terrorism in a Washington seminar, in which he stated this message from Iran: No matter how bizarre or trivial it may sound on first, second, fourth or 39th hearing, is, in my opinion, the single most impressive political ideology which has been proposed in the 20th century since the Bolshevik Revolution. If we accepted Bolshevism as a remnant of the 19th century, then, he argues, that we have had only one good one in the 20th century, and I would put the word good in quotes, and it is this one: Islamic fundamentalism. This powerful message will be with us for a very long time, no matter what happens to Ayatollah Khomeini. As I end this evening, I would just commend this book ``Sacred Rage,'' and say I will continue with briefings on this as the days proceed, and I submit herewith, Mr. Speaker, the newspaper article I referred to above: [From the Toledo (OH) Blade, Nov. 26, 2001] Shedding the Veil of bin Laden (By Thomas L. Friedman) Dubai, United Arab Emirates.--Over coffee the other day here in the gulf, an Arab friend--a sweet, thoughtful, liberal person--confided to me something that was deeply troubling him: ``My 11-year old son thinks bin Laden is a good man.'' For Americans, Osama bin Laden is a mass murderer. But for many young Arabs, bin Laden even in defeat, is still Robin Hood. What attracts them to him is not his vision of the ideal Muslim society, which few would want to live in. No, what attracts them to him is his sheer defiance of everything young Arabs and Muslims detest--their hypocritical rulers, Israel, U.S. dominance, and their own economic backwardness. He is still the finger in the eye of the world that so many frustrated, powerless people out here would love to poke. The reason it is important to eliminate bin Laden--besides justice--is the same reason it was critical to eliminate the Taliban: As long as we're chasing him around, there will never be an honest debate among Muslims and Arabs about the future of their societies. Think of all the nonsense written in the press-- particularly the European and Arab media--about the concern for ``civilian casualities,'' in Afghanistan. It turns out many of those Afghan ``civilians'' were praying for another dose of B-52s to liberate them from the Taliban, casualties or not. Now that the Taliban are gone, Afghans can freely fight out, among themselves, the war of ideas for what sort of society they want. My hope is that once bin Laden is eliminated, Arabs and Muslims will want to do the same. That is, instead of expressing rage with their repressive, corrupt rulers, or with U.S. policy, by rooting for bin Laden, they will start to raise their own voices. It's only when the Arab-Muslim world sheds the veil of bin Laden, as Afghans shed the Taliban, and faces the fact that Sept. 11 was primarily about anger and problems with their societies, not ours, will we eradicate not just the hardware of terrorism, but its software. ``We in the West can't have that debate for them, but we can help create the conditions for it to happen,'' remarked the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen. ``America's role is to show the way to incremental change--something that is not, presto, instant democracy or fantasies that enlightened despotism will serve our interest. We can't just go on looking at the Arab world as a giant gas station, indifferent to what happens inside. Because the gas is now leaking and all around people are throwing matches.'' Every day I see signs that this war of ideas is possible: It's the Arab journalist who says to me angrily of the Arab world today, ``We can't even make an aspirin for our own headache,'' or it's Ahmad al-Baghdadi, the Kuwaiti professor, who just published a remarkable essay in Kuwait's Al Anbaa and Egypt's Akhbar Al Youm titled ``Sharon Is a Terrorist-- and You?'' [Ariel] Sharon was a terrorist from the very first moment of the . . . Zionist entity,'' wrote Baghdadi. But what about Arab-Muslim rulers? ``Persecuting intellectuals in the courtrooms [of Arab countries], trials [of intellectuals] for heresy . . . all exist only in the Islamic world. Is this not terrorism? . . . Iraq alone is a never-ending story of terrorism of the state against its own citizens and neighbors. Isn't this terrorism? . . . The Palestinian Arabs were the first to invent airplane hijacking and the scaring of passengers. Isn't this terrorism? ``Arab Muslims have no rivals in this; they are the masters of terrorism toward their citizens, and sometimes their terrorism also reaches the innocent people of the world, with the support of some of the clerics . . . ``[Ours] is a nation whose ignorance makes the nations of the world laugh! The Islamic world and the Arab world are the only [places] in which intellectuals--whose only crime was to write--rot in prison. The Arab and Muslims claim that their religion is a religion of tolerance, but they show no tolerance for those who oppose their opinions. ``. . . Now the time has come to pay the price . . . and the account is long--longer than all the beards of the Taliban gang together. The West's message to the Arab and Muslim world is clear: mend your ways or else'' (translation by MEMRI). We must fight the ground war to get bin Laden and his hardware. But Arab and Muslims must fight the war of ideas to uproot his software. The sooner we help them get on to that war, the better. Ask the folks in Kabul.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank our Chairman Jim Walsh and our Ranking Member Alan Mollohan and all the staff that assisted in crafting this bill VA-HUD FY02 Appropriations bill. Faced with the allocation provided to the subcommittee, I believe the bill before us is a good and balanced product, which I support and plan to vote for today. The allocation, however, was simply inadequate to take care of our veterans and their truly pressing needs. All around our country veterans wait too long for doctors appointments, are disabled by substance abuse and mental illness, far too many are homeless, and surely it is nothing less than a crisis that a backlog of more than 500,000 claims for compensation and pension benefits are pending before the VA today. I am, however, happy to note that this report does provide an important first step toward ensuring that veterans suffering from schizophrenia have greater access to new and vitally important atypical anti-psychotic medications. Under the provision, a physician's practice of prescribing atypical anti-psychotic medications must not be used as performance indicators when evaluating the physician's work. The provision also clarifies and reiterates the policy that physicians are to use their best clinical judgment when choosing these critical anti- psychotic medications. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is provided with $7.9 billion --$74 million than the FY01 funding and $587 million more than requested. The measure provides full funding for EPA enforcement activities and staff. I am pleased that changes were made from the House bill that would have significantly reduced EPA enforcement staff and shifted more enforcement duties to states. The Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) is funded at a level of $30.1 billion--$1.7billion more than FY01 appropriations, but $433 million less than requested. It includes funding for 25,900 new Section 8 rental vouchers to provide housing assistance to additional families. There were increases in the Conference report for housing programs for the elderly, disabled, and persons with AIDS. I am disappointed that the Conference did not provide the Senate's appropriation of $300 million for HUD's Public Housing Drug Elimination Grant Program. This program fits several of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's main strategic goals: improving quality of life, promoting economic vitality, and keeping communities and neighborhoods safe. Housing authorities are specifically required to develop, in cooperation with local police, plans that ensure safety and crime prevention. Crime statistics show that crime has dropped nation wide and especially in our cities and public housing facilities since this program was created. I again am very disappointed that his program has been eliminated, with no clear replacement that is accessible to localities. The National Credit Union Administration provides $1 million for the Community Development Revolving Loan Fund for loans to community development credit unions. Of this amount $350,000 is provided for technical assistance to low income and community development credit unions. Technical assistance grants are available to low-income designated credit unions and those credit unions that expand service to low-income communities or investment areas. The purpose of these awards is to strengthen these credit unions by funding the following activities: improved technology and service delivery systems; economic development; consumer and entrepreneurial education; micro-enterprise business development; employment opportunities for through community business development; and credit union infrastructure and staff development. Once again, I appreciate the hard work behind this bill but am deeply concerned that as we prepare to honor veterans on Veterans Day that an inadequate allocation will prevents us from providing this nation's defenders and protectors of liberty with the services and benefits they deserve.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this week, while our troops are in the field in the Middle East and Central Asia, President of the United States George Bush issued an executive order to expand the United States' Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and I emphasize the words ``petroleum reserve,'' to maximize, as the President said, long-term protection against oil supply disruptions. And again I emphasize the word ``oil.'' With all due respect to the President, at this time in our country's history, I think he is moving in exactly the wrong direction. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve's name should be changed to the Strategic Fuels Reserve. And in lieu of what is happening, we should begin to move our country in a new, nonpetroleum direction. We have to go beyond the petroleum age. Under the President's executive order, our Energy Secretary, Spencer Abraham, was ordered to increase the current reserve from its level of 545 million barrels, because it is not filled up, to 700 million barrels, calling the reserve an important element of our Nation's energy security. Indeed, having a strategic fuels reserve is in the Nation's security interests. However, the President needs to think about moving America toward energy independence, not keeping us wedded to the petroleum age. And let me just reference this chart. If we look back to the 1980s, the amount of petroleum that is used annually has slowly been rising. The share of petroleum that comes from foreign nations has been rising until this year, and last year we will be over half. One-fifth of it comes from the oil-producing nations of the Middle East, one-fifth; and the rest from places like Nigeria, not exactly known for its love of democracy, and other points on the globe. I think that the President is half-right. The President is right to try to assure energy security here at home, but the way he is doing it is wrong. Now, some Americans have gotten the right message. In fact, this week in Maryland, and I would like to enter into the Record a story from the Washington Post, a mom-and-pop Chevron station in Laurel, Maryland, became the first station in that State, and only the second one in the mid-Atlantic region of our country, to offer E85, a mixture of gasoline and alcohol fuel distilled from corn or other grains. They understand we have to move America beyond the petroleum age, using ethanol as one of the most important new fuels of the future. In this article they talk about aiming to reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by boosting the use of ethanol fuels; and they are selling the gasoline up there in Maryland for $1.33 a gallon and they figure, if nothing else, it will bring more consumers to the part of the business that turns a profit. Arianna Huffington wrote a story in the L.A. Times today. She also got the right message. She has a can-do spirit for America. She basically says, ``We can all make simple adjustments to wean our country from our dependence on foreign oil.'' She says, ``In practice, what are we really being asked to do in this war as individual Americans? We are being asked to shop till we drop, we are being asked to eat out, and to visit Disneyland. ``Given our ability to play hardball with nations that harbor terrorists is going to be seriously compromised by our foreign oil habit, shouldn't we be doing everything we can to reduce that dependence starting, say,'' she says, maybe yesterday? ``America cannot go on consuming 25 percent of the world's oil while being only 5 percent of the global population.'' Then, in The New York Times this week, Thomas Friedman says the predicament the free world faces is due to oil money and the fact that we are so wedded to those systems; and, in fact, oil being the major reason for those economies of the Middle East even being able to survive. The New York Times a month ago had an editorial and I quote, entitled ``Reconsidering Saudi Arabia. Washington's embrace of the Saudi royal family dates back to the era of Franklin Roosevelt. It has always been primarily about oil.'' And then Seymour Hersh, in the October 22 issue of The New Yorker, says the following: `` `The United States is hostage to the stability of the Saudi system,' a prominent Middle Eastern oil man reported to me. `The war was declared by bin Laden, but there are thousands of bin Ladens. The fabulous military machine America has is completely useless to the enemy you face.' '' The article goes on, ``The Saudi regime,'' he says, `` `will explode in time. If they do a similar operation in Saudi Arabia has they did in New York, the price of oil will go up to $100 a barrel, more than four times what we pay today.' '' I commend to my colleagues our bill, H.R. 3099, which asks that the President exchange 2,100,000 barrels from the current petroleum reserve and convert it to the purchase of ethanol and biofuels in order to move America toward energy independence. It is time. Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record the article entitled ``Hoping to Fuel Demand With Supply,'' which I referred to earlier: [From the Washington Post, Nov. 15, 2001] Hoping to Fuel Demand With Supply (By Anita Huslin) For nearly a decade, state and federal governments have been buying fleets of vehicles capable of running on a cleaner-burning mixture of gasoline and ethanol. Few of the vehicles, however, have ever had a drop in their tanks because the blend is available at just 101 fuel stations nationwide--most of them in the Midwest. Yesterday, a mom-and-pop Chevron in Laurel became the first fuel station in Maryland and only the second in the mid- Atlantic region to offer E85, a mixture of gasoline and an alcohol fuel distilled from corn and other grains. The blend has been touted as an alternative to foreign oil and as being gentler on the environment, though the environmental claim has been debated. Maryland Energy Administration officials hope to open E85 pumps in Annapolis, Gaithersburg and Baltimore in the next year. At a pump festooned with red, white and blue flags, beaming auto manufacturing representatives and farmers applauded as the first state vehicle--a standard-issue white Ford Taurus-- was filled with the blend of 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline. ``If you want people to use the fuel, you've got to provide the stations where they can buy it,'' said Richard F. Pecora, deputy secretary of the Maryland General Services Administration. Aiming to reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by boosting the use of alternative fuels, the federal Energy Policy Act of 1992 required that vehicles capable of running on alternative fuels make up 75 percent of state government fleets. Under a U.S. program to encourage development of such vehicles, auto manufacturers have received credits for producing ethanol-burning cars, trucks and sport-utility vehicles. Those credits allow the companies to build more vehicles that get lower average gas mileage. But because ethanol fuel is sold in just 20 states and, consequently, many alternative fuel vehicles are burning regular gasoline, the program has actually increased pollution, a U.S. Department of Transportation draft study concluded this year. ``Given the slow rate of growth in the alternative fuel infrastructure, it does not appear likely that any energy conservation and environmental benefits will be realized through . . . 2008 unless strong financial incentives are put in place,'' the report said. After talking for more than a year with oil companies, none of which expressed any great interest in opening an E85 pump in Maryland, officials came upon Kevin Falls' Chevron Service Center. It's a modest two-bay repair and fuel station just up the road from Fort Meade and the National Security Administration, two federal installations with growing fleets of alternative fuel vehicles. Officials lined up a U.S. Energy Department grant that would cover the cost of installing the pump, so Falls agreed. He is selling E85 for the same price as premium gasoline-- $1.33 a gallon--and figures that if nothing else, it will bring more customers to the part of his business that turns a profit. ``The more people you get at the pump, the more jobs we get in the [repair] bays,'' Falls said. ``I figure this'll only help with that.'' Jobs are what farmers from the Maryland Grain Producers Association see in Falls's E85 pump. They tout the fuel as a way to boost demand for corn, soybeans, and other grains. ``It's going to mean money in our pockets with an increase in grain prices,'' said Donnie Tennyson, association president. The group is looking into building the East Coast's first ethanol production plant in Maryland, in the same way it has been done in the Midwest. There, farmers have raised money to build and operate plants that convert their corn, soybeans and other crops into ethanol, which is then mixed with gasoline and sold at service stations primarily in Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota. Officials estimate that as many as half a million vehicles in the Washington region can run on an ethanol fuel mix. Only one other station in the region sells E85--the Navy Annex Citgo in Alexandria, near the Pentagon. With the opening of the E85 pump in Laurel, local auto dealerships said they will begin notifying customers who have bought alternative fuel vehicles. They also said their salespeople will make the fuel option part of their pitch. ``If you have the motivation and the fuel, we have the vehicles,'' said Michael Paritee, manager of alternative fuels and government sales for General Motors. Several of its vehicles--including the 5.3-liter Suburban, Tahoe, Yukon and Yukon XLS and S-10 pickups--can run on E85. There is some debate over the environmental benefits of E85. Advocates tout its ability to reduce carbon monoxide emissions, but opponents note that when ethanol is blended with gasoline, the fuel evaporates at a higher rate, producing smog. Environmentalists also say distilling corn starch into ethanol is an energy-intensive process, often involving coal. Even so, local groups welcomed the opening of the Laurel pump. ``I'd like to think that 10 years from now our farmers will be growing a lot of our energy,'' said Michael Heller, of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. ``Not just corn and barley, but warm-season grasses that can soak up nutrient pollution, then be harvested and turned into fuel.''

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, as cochair of the new Democratic Caucus working group on Central Asia and the Middle East, please let me warmly welcome Imam Yahya Hendi to the people's House. His prayer ascends to the God of us all, who ``shows us the straight way, the way of those on whom grace is bestowed, and whose portion is not wrath, so we will not go astray.'' Mr. Speaker, I am fortunate to represent a region of our Nation where Muslims for generations along with faith-filled people from all denominations and those of secular persuasion have joined together in an interfaith mission to promote tolerance, understanding, and to advance social justice. We have built homes for the poor through Habitat for Humanity. We work together in the campaign to erase hatred. Ours is a peaceful community and a patriotic community. Indeed, in my district, Muslims have made history. They have become prominent citizens in all walks of life: medicine, engineering, law, business, education, and entertainment. Our citizens built the first mosque in Ohio and the third in our Nation. And just after September 11, people of faith joined hands around our Perrysburg mosque in a strong show of unity with our common bond to the Creator of us all. During the upcoming Ramadan, Christmas, and Hanukkah seasons, may our national mosaic shaped by people who have come here willingly from throughout the world shine beautifully as an example of how people can live together with respect for one another and without fear.

Ms. KAPTUR

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

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his concurrence.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, obviously I rise in very strong support of this bill and say it is truly an improvement over the original measure that passed the House 4 months ago. The conference committee actually did make it better. And while there are individual items with which we could each disagree, and those items will continue to be a focus for myself and other subcommittee members as we move ahead with other appropriations bills during this session, the product before us truly is worthy of our support. Let me reciprocate to my very able colleague and fairly new chairman of our committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bonilla) for successfully guiding us through the challenges surrounding his first bill as our subcommittee chair. And I think that the buoyant attitude of the members and the cooperative spirit in which they worked is due to the tone that he set on the subcommittee. Mr. Speaker, I want to issue my own thanks to our subcommittee staff that worked so very hard, such long hours, and they are never covered by C-SPAN, and the American people do not get to see the depth of their dedication: Hank Moore and Martin Delgado, Maureen Holohan, Joanne Orndorff, Jim Richards, and our detailee, Leslie Barrack, as well as Roger Szemraj from our own office and Julie Little as well. They just did an outstanding job of representing the interests of this House in this conference. I wanted to pay special thanks to Martha Foley, who is our lone minority staff member, who ably and successfully represented our side of the aisle in painstaking negotiations with the other body. I am just so pleased she is able to be with us here on the floor today. I hope that all of her relatives and friends are watching because she surely deserves the appreciation of the American people. Mr. Speaker, we bring to you a conference report that is $860 million below the enacted level for the last fiscal year, but it is $1.8 billion over the administration's request and $1.4 billion over the original bill that passed the House. Now, should anyone have concerns about these points of comparison, let me respectfully point out that our needs today are far different from those that were submitted with the President's budget earlier this year, and they are substantially different from those that our Nation faced prior to September 11. As I pointed out earlier this year, we are touched in our country by agriculture many times each day. It might be in the food we eat, the fabrics we wear, the biofuels that are being produced or the medications or vitamins that are prescribed. We are touched each day by research, by education, by training, by our food and animal, plant and health inspection services and by marketing services. This bill continues the essential points that nearly 80 percent of the spending in this bill is mandatory. When one combines all the food assistance programs and the farm price support programs, only about 20 percent of what we can really affect in the bill is discretionary. Over half is what is projected to be spent in this measure is for food programs. That includes Food Stamps, the Women, Infant and Children Food Program and the Child and Elderly Nutrition Programs. Now, there are significant accomplishments in this conference bill. We have provided an increase of $211 million for the WIC program over the initial House bill. With recent economic difficulties and increasing unemployment, we have added funds that are available in the program, should we need them. In fact, we have established a $2 billion reserve for the Food Stamp Program to reflect these concerns, the largest reserve we have ever had in this program. I might just mention, if you look at New York City and many of the service workers that worked in the World Trade Center who are contract workers and have no benefits, those families absolutely have the right to be fed, to have a good holiday season; and this program will help cushion the blows that this economy and the situation we are facing with regard to terrorism is having on American families. So we provided the largest reserve we ever have in the history of this program. We have provided $10 million in supplemental funding for the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition program, an effort that has been more successful than anyone had anticipated and one which we hope will be continued as a part of the regular farm bill. Both these funds are to support the program in addition to the other resources from the Commodity Credit Corporation that we hope the Secretary will use to sustain and hopefully expand this program to the full $25 million level. Let me also mention we have the strongest possible language included in the statement of managers to be certain the Secretary of Agriculture understands that we expect her to continue the Global Food for Education program. This program can help boys and girls throughout the world get the necessary food while receiving education; and when we think about what is going on in Afghanistan and the surrounding region, it is particularly vital that we see the impact that this program can have in the months and years ahead. We have so many Members here in the House to thank, Members like the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall), and certainly our retired Members from the other body, Bob Dole and George McGovern, for inspiring and carrying us through on the vision for this program and what it can do around the world. The House did go along in this measure also with the higher Senate level for title II of the Food for Peace Program, PL-480, as the House had instructed before we went to conference. I respectfully and seriously thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bonilla) and the staff for their efforts in securing this important funding. We do have some successes with increasing food safety funding, particularly with respect to the Food and Drug Administration. The bill provides 10.7 percent over last year's level, and we know how important that agency is now in safeguarding our food supply and the safety of our pharmaceuticals. It also includes the additional funds to fully fund the pay increases so essential to keeping staff in place and adding staff where necessary so that we can deal with threats to public health and ensuring public health and safety here at home. We also included an increase of $15 million over last year for BSE prevention and enforcement. This is commonly known as mad cow disease. We have seen what it has done in other parts of the world, and we know that increasing monitoring of imports and inspection of feed mills here at home is essential to keeping that tragedy out of the American food chain. We have included additional funds for food safety activities, including our import inspections and monitoring activities; and we have also important successes in this bill on funding for animal welfare, for rural development, for water and housing programs and research programs at our 1890 Institutions. I know that the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton), who has worked so hard in order to increase funding, will speak on this matter very shortly; and we thank her so very much for her leadership and dedication on this important improvement to what our country offers, not just here at home but around the world. Let me just say as I wrap up here, I am concerned about inadequate funding levels for food safety activities, particularly in the wake of what happened on September 11; and I am really encouraged that Secretary Thompson has recommended over $61 million in supplemental funds for the purpose of strengthening FDA's food safety and security activities. This truly is a step in the right direction, but only a step; and we look forward to working with the Bush administration on improving those numbers. We also had research funding requests from hundreds and hundreds of members that had to be reduced due to limits imposed in this bill. Hopefully in future years, we will be able to find a way to meet these important research activities which are the seed bed for innovation and advancement in our Nation. Let me also say that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) was such a leader on this matter in our subcommittee, and this deals with the assistance to specialty-crop producers, particularly apple producers, that in the conference bill we have provided $75 million to assist those who have been so adversely affected by weather and drought conditions. In our original bill we had hoped to get $150 million. We just did not have the funds. We just did not have the allocation to do that; and I wanted to again recognize the gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt), who have my personal commitment to work with them to make sure producers get the help they need. On two final points, let me just say the conferees were successful in retaining language to retain the pork check-off program. We expect the Department to honor the votes of producers to terminate that program or to put any settlement agreement to a new vote. Finally, and this is truly emotional for all Americans, we were so pleased to be able to work with the able gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) to include language naming our very well-respected Farmer to Farmer program as the John Ogonowski Farmer to Farmer Program. John Ogonowski was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 11 which crashed into one of the World Trade Towers and citizen of Massachusetts. He had exemplified the intent of the Farmer to Farmer program in reaching out among others to Cambodian producers, new immigrants to our shores, who had the need of improved skills to maximize their farming proficiencies, and naming this program for him offers the program an example of an outstanding American who knew both the responsibilities and joy of helping others to improve their situation while taking satisfaction from the accomplishment that such help provides. Today, in the Sun newspaper from Massachusetts, there was a story that talks about American Airlines pilot John Ogonowski, and it talks about the former Under Secretary of Agriculture August Schumacher, who was a friend of John Ogonowski, and talked about how he was a fourth generation farm boy who never forgot his roots and he made real differences with his new entry programs for farmers in our country. John Ogonowski's father, Alexander Ogonowski, also a farmer, was overwhelmed when he learned of this great honor for his son and American patriot; and he said it is a little too much right now to even comment on. As we move this bill to the floor today, we especially honor pilot John Ogonowski, and all those who fly on behalf of our commercial airlines and all those in service to our country in every walk of life. We owe them the freedom of expression that we enjoy here in this Chamber today. I include for the Record the article from the Sun newspaper. Bill Aims To Rename U.S. Farm Program For Late Dracut Pilot (By Kathleen Deely) DRACUT--A federal program in which U.S. farmers help their counterparts overseas will be named after deceased Dracut resident John Ogonowski if a bill before Congress is approved. Ogonowski, who died piloting American Airlines Flight 11 when it was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, had for years harvested hay and produce on his 150-acre farm on Marsh Hill Road. Renaming the Department of Agriculture's Farmer-to-Farmer program after Ogonowski has been included in the federal Agriculture Appropriation bill for 2002. The House and Senate are expected to pass the legislation, which will then go to President Bush for his signature, in the next few weeks. John's sister, Carol Ogonowski, said naming the program after her brother is ``one of many tributes that John deserves.'' ``John would be honored. It's only a fitting tribute to his life that touched so many others,'' she said. The program is similar to the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project that Ogonowski ran for Cambodian farmers on his Whitegate Farm for several years. The partnership between Tufts University, the University of Massachusetts Extension Service and the state Department of Food and Agriculture helps immigrants grow their native vegetables and learn the farming industry. Likewise, the program provides agricultural technical assistance to developing countries around the world and increases food production there. The idea to name the program after Ogonowski came from August Schumacher Jr., the former undersecretary for farming and international agricultural programs, who was a friend of Ogonowski. U.S. Rep. Martin Meehan, a Lowell Democrat, worked to have the name changed included in the 2002 agriculture bill. ``John was a fourth-generation farm boy who never forgot his roots,'' said Meehan. ``He made a real difference with his New Entry programs.'' Attaching Ogonowski, who was a full-time pilot, to the project makes sense, those who knew him said, because farming was his true passion. John's father, Alexander Ogonowski, also a farmer, was overwhelmed when he learned of the honor. ``It's a little too much right now.'' he said. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), a member of the subcommittee without whose excellent work this bill would not have been possible.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr), a very distinguished member of our subcommittee, and I just hope that his constituents know how hard he works on their behalf. It is truly a joy to have someone with his vision and abilities working on this subcommittee.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes for the purpose of conducting a colloquy with the gentleman from Texas (Chairman Bonilla). (Ms. KAPTUR asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman knows that members of our subcommittee have been concerned about food safety, and we know that contaminated food products cause an estimated 76 million food-borne illnesses annually in our country. Seafood represents more than 10 percent of the documented illnesses in the United States. The conferees have accepted report language offered by the other body that calls for the Food and Drug Administration to report by January 1 regarding implementation of regulations by the General Accounting Office with respect to the compliance of seafood producer with HACCP, the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points. That language concluded by calling for the development of food safety technologies that could ensure constant safe temperatures of seafood throughout the food chain. As a point of clarification, since some might construe the phrase ``food chain'' in a fashion different than we intend, would the chairman agree with me that our intent is to review the development of food safety technologies through the food supply chain?

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to draw my colleagues' attention to yesterday's New York Times, the front page. There are some stories there that bear an interrelationship that is important. There was a major story about the World Trade Organization's upcoming meeting in Qatar in the Middle East, the first meeting that the WTO will be holding since Seattle; and the story talks about the World Trade Organization and some of the difficulties that it has been having in gaining broad-based public support for its activities and deliberations; and in fact, the story implies that if these meetings in Qatar are not successful, it might spell the demise of the WTO and the type of globalization initiatives that have ensued since this Congress passed GATT just a few years ago when the WTO was set up. One of the reasons it says that these talks are having difficulty is because of the fact that the world trade system has resulted in widening disparities between the very rich and the very poor, and it is very interesting that the meeting is being held in a part of the world which demonstrates the wide disparity in incomes between the very rich and the very poor. On the same front page there was a story about the rumblings in South Africa that have come since independence was granted, and what does it talk about? It talks about the growing disparity in South Africa between the very rich and the very poor and the fact that thousands and thousands of people are having their electricity shut off, are not able to earn a living, rising unemployment levels and that globalization without a social contract, and those are my words, not the words of the New York Times, creates a rising poverty and rising wealth for only the few, and that our globe is being affected by these forces, these powerful economic forces in all regions. Recently, this week, Secretary Powell has met with the top leaders of Bangladesh, Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in the world, which has a $2 billion trade deficit with the United States. How do these stories connect? These stories connect because in Bangladesh over 3,500 contract shops operate, producing over a billion garments for the world, half of which come here to the United States. Women in that country make caps that are worn by athletic teams at all of our major universities, for example. They are forced to sew 320 caps per hour if they want to keep their job, and their bosses want them to increase it to 370 caps per hour. For each cap, they are paid a penny and a half. Those caps arrive in our country for a total of $1 for total costs of production and shipment, material, labor and transportation. And then they are sold, on average, inside this economy for $17 to $19 a cap. Now, the foreign minister of Bangladesh wants us to remove further tariffs on these items coming to our country. And what I am thinking is, even if we remove the tariffs, what guarantees are there that the women of that country would get a living wage? There is absolutely no guarantee. The trading system that this globalization regimen has put in place has put a downward pressure on workers across this world; and they are rising up in South Africa, in the Middle East, in South America. We saw their faces in Seattle. Somebody had better pay attention to what is wrong with this global trading system. It works to the benefit of the few at the cost of the many. I am for trade. I have a trading district, but I am for the dignity of the working person whether they work on the farm or whether they work in the factory, wherever in the world they exist. This world trading system must have a social contract, and without that we are going to have political tremors across this world, the likes of which the free nations have never experienced before. I would say that you must have free trade among free people. And that trade regimen that is put in place by the laws we pass and by the institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and the Export-Import Bank, if they do not give credence to democratic rights and freedoms then, my goodness, what are we doing? So I would commend to my colleagues, take a look at the New York Times. Think about the connection between WTO and Qatar this week and what is going on in South Africa, and what is going on in Mexico where wages have been cut in half, and what went on in Seattle when people did not earn enough for the work they do. What kind of system is this country promoting?