Sander Levin

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I am so glad to be here with my colleagues Supporting Goals and Ideals of National Mentoring Month. As House Resolution 660 so accurately states, ``mentoring is a centries-old concept, through which a dependable adult provides guidance, support, and encouragement to help a young become a responsible, productive adult.'' It goes on to conclude that when properly carried out mentoring ``helps young people stay in school and improve academically, boosts self-esteem and communication skills, and improves the chances of going on to higher education.'' I could not agree more. In Michigan, we proudly recognize the contributions made by Mentor Michigan, led by Governor Jennifer Granholm, and the First Gentleman Dan Mulhern. Two individuals who lead by example and serve as mentors themselves. I was recently privileged to join the First Gentleman at a presentation on mentoring at the First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Clemens, Michigan where he spoke passionately and effectively not only about the meaning of mentoring in his own life but the broader impact it has for our Michigan community. This program exemplifies what happens when government and community actively work to make certain all of our youth develop lasting relationships with individuals who are stable and caring. By developing a state-wide network of mentoring programs, Mentor Michigan has fostered support and unity among programs that accomplish what so often gets overlooked, encouragement and guidance of youth. Mentoring programs throughout the state are work in conjunction with Mentor Michigan to promote three simple values. First, that every child has the right to a stable, caring adult in his or her life. It is so easy to take this for granted. In Michigan, over 237 programs connect youth with high quality mentors that are dedicated to helping children reach their aspirations and guiding them through fulfilling their needs. Mentor Michigan recruits and connects dedicated mentors with effective programs. Second, everyone is responsible for the well being of our children including individuals, businesses, nonprofit and faith-based organizations, education institutions, and government. ``It takes a village to raise a child,'' says an old African proverb, and Mentor Michigan knows that a safe, well developed network of resources is a vital way to show that community involvement matters in shaping the way young people see the world. Mentors satisfy needs and programs that value mentors such as Mentor Michigan should be commended. Third, volunteering is a significant way for people to enrich their lives by giving of themselves to children in their community. Youth energize the world around them and working with youth energizes the individuals who take up the challenge. Over 99 percent of Michigan's mentors have recommended mentoring to others. Mentor Michigan programs provide Americans the opportunity to develop young leaders of tomorrow. Michigan is the only state with such a focus on tracking and assessing its mentoring programs. It is estimated that over 30,000 Michigan youth benefitted from having a mentor in 2005. I feel privileged to know such outstanding devotion to the generation of tomorrow and very proud to honor it today. Mr. Speaker, I ask that my colleagues join me in recognizing the great contributions mentoring programs make every day to a better America of tomorrow.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, this issue was put so squarely, and I think clearly, in the answer of Secretary Snow when he testified in the Senate. He was asked why the White House had put a higher priority on the investment tax breaks than relief from an alternative minimum tax. His answer, and I quote, ``because lower taxes on dividends and capital gains more broadly benefit taxpayers than AMT relief.'' That is the position of the administration. So what they are saying is that tax relief dividends and capital gains, we are talking now about 2009 and 2010, not this year, next year or the year thereafter, that that is more important when over 50 percent of the benefit goes to people making a million dollars a year, that is more important than the impact of the AMT not in 2009, 2010, but this year, on 19 million taxpayers. That is really the issue. Now, we hear all kinds of arguments. Mr. Thomas kind of says, well, those AMT people are kind of wealthy people. A lot of them are not, nowhere near the million bucks made by the people who are the 53 percent who gain in 2009 and 2010. And then, well, it said, okay. More taxpayers receive capital gains in dividend reduction, that is true, most of them are in lower middle income brackets, but most of the money goes to people making a million bucks a year. That has never been challenged. Well, then the answer is, Mr. Camp, we are going to do both. Tell us how you are going to do both. Tell us. Stand up now and tell us. How are you going to pay for both?

Mr. LEVIN. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I take back my time. How are you going to pay for both? The Senate said they could not pay for both and that is why they put the AMT in. We voted for AMT relief, the 400-some, because we wanted the issue to stay alive and for the conference committee to act responsibly, civilly and to have the AMT in there. How are you going to pay for both? Tell me how you are going to pay for both.

Mr. LEVIN. No, no. Do not tell me what you will not do. Tell me what you will do.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the career of Harry Lester upon his retirement as the Director of District 2 of the United Steelworkers of America. Mr. Lester has dedicated his life's work to the well-being and safety of steelworkers. The son of a West Virginia coal miner, who was tragically lost in a mining accident, Mr. Lester grew up to be a leading advocate for protecting the rights of steelworkers through the creation and preservation of decent wages, health benefits, workplace safety regulations, and education opportunities. Mr. Lester began his career as an engineer with the McLouth Steel Corporation in Trenton, Michigan, in 1954 and rose to national attention in the 1980s for his leading role in the fight to save the company from bankruptcy and to preserve the jobs of its 3,600 steelworkers. As the USWA District Director and a member of the McLouth Steel Board of Directors, Mr. Lester orchestrated in 1988 the largest employee stock buyout of the time. While the company ultimately closed its doors in 1994, he has never ceased in his efforts to preserve the United States' steel industry and to provide for the rights of USWA members. Notably, Mr. Lester engineered a Voluntary Employee Benefit Association plan and negotiated Cooperative Partnership Agreements between USWA members and National Steel Corporation. As steel companies consolidated, Mr. Lester worked at the negotiating table to guarantee that these protections were not lost. The language he ensured in these negotiations for workplace health and safety was recognized by the Supreme Court as the standard for workers. He has extended his championing of workers' rights into negotiations with Dow Chemical, National Standard, Quanex, and DSC, Ltd. In addition to his commitment to his fellow workers, Mr. Lester has been a vigorous citizen of Michigan and is deeply committed to improving education and health in the State of Michigan. He and his wife established the Harry E. & Mary E. Lester Scholarship Fund for Steelworker Children to provide scholarship opportunities for the children of steelworkers in District Two. He was appointed by three governors to serve on the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority's Board of Commissioners and serves as a board member to many distinguished organizations, including the United Way of Michigan, the Michigan State AFL-CIO Board, the National Kidney Foundation of Michigan, and the Greater Detroit-Area Health Council. Mr. Lester initiated and co-chairs the Annual Downriver Community Prayer Breakfast in Southgate, Michigan, and holds the rank of ``Ambassador'' for the Detroit Muslim Temple of the Shrine. Recently, Mr. Lester was granted an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Humanities from Michigan State University. Harry Lester often stood at the intersection of workers' rights and public policy. He understood that federal trade policy, and especially unfair trade practices of other nations, dramatically impacted the industry in which he worked and he was tireless in his efforts to impact change in Washington, DC. He also understood the real impact of federal policies on workers and their families when it came to retirement security, pensions and health care. He was passionate and articulate both in terms of impacting legislation, and informing his membership of the importance of those policies on their work and family life. Mr. Speaker, I have been privileged over the years to work with Harry Lester, to observe his leadership and to call him a friend, I ask my colleagues to join me in paying tribute to Harry Lester for his decades of tireless and effective service to our Nation's workers.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. LEVIN. Does the gentleman deny point blank the estimate of CBO, we do not control it, that this bill will lead to a reduction of $8.4 billion in child support for the kids of America? Do you deny the CBO estimate?

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, last night the President of the United States said, ``Wise policies such as welfare reform have made a difference in the character of our country.'' What you are doing on the Republican side, I am afraid, is in character. It is not class warfare on our side, it is your warfare against the children of America. It is not our definition, it is CBO's and I quote from a letter of January 31 to Mr. Rangel: ``As requested by your staff, CBO has reviewed the child support provisions in the conference agreement for S. 1932, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, and we have determined that those provisions contain an intergovernmental mandate as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act.'' That is what CBO says. And CBO says something else. That this conference report, with the changes you have made, will lead to a reduction in the amount collected for the kids of America in child support of $8.4 billion. That is CBO, not Democrats saying that. So I just want to tell everybody who is thinking of voting for this conference report, you should expect now, next week, June, July, August, September, October, and yes, in November, the citizens of this country and of your district, will be asking you to justify how you cut funding for child support in a way that would lead to the kids of your district and America combined losing $8.4 billion in child support. That is kids who need it, families who need it, from people who owe it. Yes, as the President said yesterday, there are some wise policies that make a difference in the character of our country, not what you are doing today.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, what irony. This is the Deficit Reduction Act. We just heard; what was the deficit in November? $83 billion. You have the gall to come here and talk about deficit reduction? $83 billion in one month. Your priorities are clear. You do not bring up the tax bill tonight because you are afraid to combine a bill that cuts $20 billion, over half of which goes to people making 1 million bucks a year, with these budget cuts. Mr. Speaker, we scared you off, some of your intentions on child support, which would have resulted in $24 billion less over the next 10 years collected for the kids of America. You have now reduced it to $8.4 billion. That is how much less children are going to receive. And the irony is that the States that are hurt the most are the States that are best performing. And then when it comes to welfare reform, in the 1990s, many of us worked together to change our laws. We did it in a way that provided adequate child care and Medicaid. President Clinton would not sign the bill until those provisions were in there. You could not get an immediate welfare reform package through the Senate, so what you have done is to stick it in this bill. That is what you are doing. The child care provision, only about $1 billion. It would take $11 billion for the States, if the States met the work requirements, $11 billion more in child care, and you do not help at all in terms of health care. What you do is change the formulas so that there is going to be on the States a cost in order to meet this in the next 5 years of over $8 billion. So you are going to hurt the States, you are going to hurt kids of a parent or parents who are moving from welfare to work, and you are going to provide totally inadequate child care for those people who are moving from welfare to work. Your priorities are very clear, very clear, a tax cut for millionaires and hurting the kids of the United States of America. Frankly, I do not care what time of the year it is; it is bad every day of the year to do that, and I hope we will turn this down.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, just quickly, to follow up what Mr. Skelton has talked about, the Defense authorization bill was signed, and here is what I read in CQ: ``House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter confirmed through a spokesman that he inserted the provision,'' this is totally extraneous, apparently, if that happened after the signatures, ``at the behest of House leadership.'' And this is a quote: `` `Hunter reserves the right to support the leadership team,' said Harald Stavenas, his spokesman.'' Get the authorization bill on the floor.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to the distinguished career of Mitch Kehetian. Known as the ``dean of Detroit-area journalism,'' Mitch Kehetian's career in journalism dates back to 1953 with roots stemming from Allen Park, Michigan. Beginning as a ``copy boy'' for the Detroit Times, Mr. Kehetian served diligently as reporter and editor working his way through the journalism establishment. After his tenure at the Times, he joined the Citizen-Journal of Columbus, Ohio then returned to Detroit at the Eastside News. In 1969, Mr. Kehetian accepted a job as the Warren reporter and bureau chief of the Macomb Daily. Serving as a reporter, managing editor, and editorial page editor at the Macomb Daily for over 30 years, Mr. Kehetian brought an intense, lifelong interest in politics, public service and government to his coverage, especially their impact on citizens and communities. His wide-ranging attention to international, national, and local affairs and his personable yet direct manner drew attention and admiration from the halls of all types of houses--from Macomb to the White House. Mitch Kehetian loved and believed in the work of journalism. He was a reporter's reporter committed to the news, and the trusted role of the ``newsman'' in our country. Michigan was better off with his reporter's eye and his editor's pen at work in our community. His dedication to his work allowed him to enjoy mentoring young and aspiring journalists often at the beginning of their careers. Mr. Kehetian served as both the President and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Detroit Press Club, and as President of the Metro Detroit Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2002, the Society bestowed its highest honor upon him, ``Lifetime Achievement Award.'' He has also been awarded countless journalism awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, Michigan Press Association, to name just a few. Mr. Kehetian is also a proud family man and a proud Armenian- American. Mr. Speaker, it has been my personal privilege to know and be in regular touch with Mitch these last decades. He combined enough distance from people in public life to be objective and enough closeness to create friendships. So I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Mitch Kehetian, a distinguished journalist and a friend, for his years of dedicated service to journalism and the communities and citizens he served and in wishing him good health and happiness in the next phase of his life.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I want to take the language we have heard from the Republicans in the last few minutes and apply it to child support. CBO says this budget will result in $24 billion less in child support over the next 10 years. That is the Congressional Budget Office. All right, one of you said Washington spends too much, too unwisely. Cutting child support payments by $24 billion? You also said not how much, but how it is spent. Yes, it is spent in administrative expenditures to collect money for children. Oh, and one of you said it is the family budget that is at stake. Absolutely, families with kids who are entitled to child support, and you are going to reduce what is collected by $24 billion over the next 10 years. And then the lingo we hear, ``slow the growth rate.'' Under this formula, the money goes to the States and to the counties to collect money that is owed to children. I spent some time out in Macomb County talking to the people who administer this program, and I wish I could bring just one of the children who will be harmed by what you are doing and put them on this table, and have you look them in the eye and repeat your language. I do not think you would dare do it.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, we are not talking about raising taxes. You are dodging the issue. This is not the formula for Medicaid or other programs; this is a formula in terms of the Federal share for child support. I would like any of you to stand up and deny the estimate of CBO that what you are doing will reduce the amount collected in child support by $24 billion over the next 10 years.

Mr. LEVIN. And it is $24 billion less because of you people.

Mr. LEVIN. It will go up. Sure, they are going to go up because there are more kids from families of divorce. But I ask you, does CBO not say because of your change, $24 billion over the next 10 years will not be collected for the children? Yes or no?

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, millions of Iraqis went out and voted for a new, national parliament, and I applaud them for doing so. I also commend the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, who helped the Iraqi people vote in safety. Our troops are doing a difficult job in Iraq. I do not favor immediate withdrawal. Opposition to immediate withdrawal is not a substitute for a clear and detailed American strategy in Iraq, nor is blindly staying the course. What is needed is coming to terms with what the course should be--a plan regarding completion of our presence in Iraq. Last month, the Senate adopted an amendment to the Defense bill that requires the President to submit such a plan to Congress, an amendment I strongly support. Indeed, I favor the more rigorous version of the amendment that was offered in the other body. In addition to requiring the Administration to provide Congress with a detailed strategy in Iraq with measurable benchmarks, the Administration would also provide Congress with estimated dates for the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq as each condition is met. Unfortunately, the resolution before the House is transparently political. The House should reject it.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, in a few words, what we need to do is to reform our pension system but not to undermine it. There is a basic issue here, and I hope Members will pay attention to it. We have had in this country in the private sector a system of guaranteed monthly benefits under defined pension plans in the private sector for millions and millions of people. That has been meaningful. What I think is going to happen if this bill becomes law and if it were to be combined in conference with provisions in the Senate is essentially to undermine defined benefit plans and move us towards what are called defined contribution plans, so more and more, everybody will rely on a 401(k) instead of the guaranteed benefit in the private sector. That shift was tried in Social Security by the majority. It failed for good reasons, and now I think there is another effort here regarding private pension plans to lead to the same result. We asked the Bush administration when they testified before Ways and Means, tell us the impact on industry of your proposals. They could not tell us. If you look at the chief financial officers, 60 percent of them who deal with pension plans essentially say that this yield curve of the administration, and there is a modified version of it in this bill, would lead to benefit cuts and termination of defined benefit plans, and that would affect manufacturing as well as other industries. I know there have been some efforts to moderate that. Various people have scrambled to try to reduce the potential undermining of defined benefit plans through this provision on credit balances, but I want everybody to know that that is not likely to work out in the main because this Republican bill would discourage companies from doing the responsible and sensible thing, advance funding their pension plans to free up resources in years when they needed to make big expenditures, like rolling out a big product line, and penalize those who would do it any way, who would advance funds. Look, there are some transition rules, but they are not going to basically resolve this issue of whether we are going to maintain, strengthen defined benefit plans. Now, it is said, look to the conference committee. All I can say is, look at the history of conference committees in this institution in recent years. What is likely to come out is a bill that would make this bill even worse, and even if it did not, what we face with this bill is this basic question: Do we want to strengthen defined guaranteed pension plans and payments, or are we going to move to everybody on their own? I think this House should stand up and say, let us stand up for a defined benefit system in this country.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I mostly want to talk about substance. But you know it is so hypocritical for anybody on the majority side to come here and say that the minority is just saying no when you will not allow us to put on the floor a substitute to which we want to say a resounding yes. That is really hypocrisy. This is too important a subject to be governed by the tyranny of the majority. We need to strengthen and to save defined benefit plans in this country. This is the question. Will this bill do that? And I think the answer is basically, in all likelihood, it will not strengthen and preserve, but it will weaken and over time eliminate. Look, when it came to Social Security your mantra was save, strengthen Social Security. And the President, in this Chamber, used those terms, when the real purpose was not to save and strengthen Social Security. The purpose was to replace it. And there is a legitimate issue here, whether what you are proposing here, when combined with the Senate's and with the administration's position, will it preserve and strengthen defined benefit plans or will it likely undermine? And the answer, I think, is that it will do the latter. When we come to the general debate, I am going to be talking about a number of the factors. There are four key factors at play in this bill. They are technical, but they are vital: the yield curve, the credit balance issue, the credit rating or how assets are evaluated, and the averaging and smoothing issues. As to just one of them, the yield curve provision in this bill, the people who work with these issues, the chief financial investment people, 60 percent, say essentially that most of the pension plans are going to either be frozen or they are going to be eliminated. That is what 60 percent of these officers say will be the result. So you are not going to be protecting workers from underfunded pension plans. What you are going to be doing, essentially, is putting in place rules that will make it difficult for pension plans to exist and, therefore, they will be withdrawn, if not, frozen. So that is really the basic issue here. And it is heightened because of the administration's position. They want to so tighten the rules that it will be hard for any of these defined benefit plans to survive. So this is the basic issue, whether in this country we want to try to preserve defined benefit plans. Most of them are not in trouble. Many of them would be placed in trouble through a combination of the provisions in this bill and in the Senate bill. So I want to close with this: What you are saying, and you have said it on the floor, is leave it to the conference committee. For example, there is no protection for airline workers here at all. Leave it to the conference committee. What you have said to a few of the people is we will make some adjustments here in this bill, but there is no assurance that those adjustments will prevail. So in a word, what you are trying to do is not protect defined benefit plans, but through these provisions and those in the Senate bill, with the help of the administration, you are going to accelerate their demise. That is our position. And it is worthy of discussion. It is worthy of debate, and it is worthy of your giving us a substitute that would make sure that defined benefit plans can survive in the United States of America for the workers of this country.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, this Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill is a very flawed bill which would badly underfund health care, education, and social services critical to all Americans. Although I was unable to vote in favor of the bill, I do want to call attention to one bright spot. For the first time, the Congress has provided dedicated funding to educate women, their families, and their physicians about the risk factors and early warning signs of gynecologic cancer. Each year, tens of thousands of women die of gynecologic cancers that could have been treated had they been detected earlier. Ovarian cancer, the deadliest of the gynecologic cancers, has a survival rate of 80 to 90 percent if detected in Stage One or Stage Two and a survival rate of 20 percent or less in the late stages. Although only cervical cancer has a screening test reliable enough for routine use on women without symptoms, gynecologic cancers have clear risk factors and early warning signs. A recent study found that almost 90 percent of women with early stage ovarian cancer had symptoms before being diagnosed. That's why public education is key--if women and their doctors know the risk factors and early signs, a specialist can use diagnostic tools to rule out cancer or detect it in the early stages. I first became aware of the tremendous opportunity for the federal government to save lives when I heard the story of one of my constituents. Johanna Silver Gordon was a health-conscious public school teacher who died of ovarian cancer after being diagnosed in a later stage--leaving friends, family, and students heartbroken that they and she had not known the early warning signs. Unfortunately, her story is all too common. I first heard Johanna's story from her sister, Sheryl, and I introduced legislation to create Johanna's Law, a national public education campaign to eradicate gynecologic cancer death. Thanks to Sheryl's work and that of thousands of other tireless cancer survivors, family members, and physicians, Johanna's Law has the support of a majority of the House of Representatives and provided the inspiration for the language in this bill. The language in this bill directs the Secretary of HHS and the Office of Women's Health to coordinate their education and outreach efforts on gynecologic cancers into a national public education campaign, focused on early detection. The bill provides $100,000 in dedicated resources, in addition to the resources HHS already has for cancer education. It is a small but important first step toward ensuring that what happened to Johanna does not happen to other women. I commend the conferees for its inclusion, and hope we can work in a bipartisan fashion to build upon this effort. I also want to commend my colleagues, Darrell Issa, Rosa DeLauro, and Kay Granger, who have worked tirelessly with me to promote Johanna's Law and raise awareness of gynecologic cancers. I hope we can continue to work together to build on this start.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Madam Speaker, there is no question that Congress must give law enforcement the tools it needs to prevent terrorist attacks against the American people. When the Congress approved the PATRIOT Act 4 years ago, we recognized that the serious nature of the threat required giving law enforcement broad new powers to help prevent it. There is also no question that the House and Senate should not allow the PATRIOT Act to expire on December 31. Indeed, nearly all of the 166 provisions of the PATRIOT Act are already the permanent law of the land. Four years ago, the Bush administration and the Leadership of the House rushed the original PATRIOT Act through the House without full debate or the chance to make improvements to the bill. There is no need to rush an imperfect bill through the House today simply to accommodate a 6-week holiday recess. While the conference report makes a number of improvements to the measure the House approved last summer, further improvement is needed. In particular, I am disappointed that the bill before us does not include language to change how first-responder grants are allocated. We need to make the formula risk-based. Just last week, the bipartisan members of the former 9/11 Commission awarded Congress and the Bush administration a grade of F for our failure to distribute homeland security funds on the basis of risk. The 9/11 Commission made this recommendation 17 months ago. How can we continue to justify a first responder grant formula that awards Wyoming $37.94 per capita while Michigan--a key border State--receives just $7.87 per capita? If we're not going to fix this problem now, then when will we make this change? In a number of other areas, the Senate-passed version of the bill included key safeguards that were removed from the conference report. In particular, the Senate bill contained important protections relating to the business and library records provisions of the Act that have been so controversial with our constituents. The Senate-passed bill required the government to show that the records sought by the government have some connection to a suspected terrorist or spy. The standard contained in the conference report is much weaker. It would allow the government to compel the production of business or library records merely by showing that the records are ``relevant'' to a terrorism investigation. In addition, unlike the Senate-passed bill, the conference report fails to protect the records of innocent Americans collected by means of National Security Letters. The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year to obtain consumer records from communications companies, financial institutions, and other companies. These National Security Letters are issued without the approval of a judge and permanently bar recipients from telling anyone besides their lawyer that they have been served. Unlike the Senate-passed bill, the conference report does not provide for meaningful judicial review of the National Security Letter nondisclosure requirement. Under the bill before the House, the records collected under National Security Letters can be kept forever and even used for data-mining. We need better privacy safeguards in this area. I will vote against passage of this legislation today because I am convinced that we can write a better bill that safeguards both our vital security interests and basic American liberties. To that end, I have cosponsored legislation that calls for a three-month extension of the current PATRIOT Act to give Congress additional time to perfect this legislation. We should take the time we need to do the job right.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I am so glad to be here with my colleagues. John Dingell is being lionized here tonight and for good reason, as was true on previous occasions. And I think ``lion'' is a good term to describe John Dingell. Ferociousness. There is a ferocity about John, about his beliefs, a belief in the common man and woman and their aspirations and their needs. A ferociousness about the need for health for everybody in this country. He has devoted his life to this. A ferociousness, and I am not on the committee, but Members who have been there tell me that is so true when he investigates. And also for the automotive industry, it is in his blood. It is in his being, raised in southeast Michigan, knowing the importance of it. A lion is also known for bravery, and, John, you are gutsy. You are brave. You do not simply look to see where the winds are blowing, and that has been a mark of your career. A lion is also known for eminence. And I think just, for example, and Mr. Obey and others have talked about the environment, what a lofty person John has been about our earth, about its sacredness, its sanctity. And also, John, you have been an eminence in terms of the institution here. You believe in it, and you want everybody else to believe in it. A lion is also known for gruffness, and there is a bit of that in John. He can be very succinct. So all those characteristics of a lion, I think, apply to John Dingell as a lion in this place. But we were chatting in my office. Some of the staff has worked directly with John, and everybody has worked with his staff, and we were talking about another characteristic of John that is sometimes lost, and that is gentleness. Some of it comes from his beloved wife, Debbie, but I think it is part of his being. So we were talking about, and I finish with this, a fable about a lion, the fable about Androcles and the lion. Androcles was a slave, as we might remember, who escaped. He fled from the Emperor. He wandered about and came across a lion. And the lion, he thought, would go after him. But, no, it was kind of moaning and groaning, and so Androcles approached and found the lion with a huge thorn in the paw. And Androcles took out the thorn, and they became friends. And the lion took Androcles, as the Members may remember, to the cave and helped to feed him. But soon afterwards, the lion and Androcles were captured, and the sentence was to throw the slave into, I guess, the center of a ring and throw him to the lion. And so here they came. And the emperor showed up, and all of his court, and they expected that the lion would approach Androcles and maul and eat him. So they let the lion loose. And the lion comes from the den and rushes in, and there is a lot of roaring. And at first, I guess, the lion roars at Androcles, but then as he comes close, he recognizes who it is, and he licks his hands like a friendly dog. And the emperor hears this story, wondering what had happened, and Androcles tells the story, and the slave is let loose and the lion. And I close, if this fable applies, and I think it does, to John and his gentleness, I think John would have done something different. Androcles would have said, Look, the lion is loose; however, I think the lion also would have said to the emperor, We will go after you unless you make sure among all your constituents there is universal health care. And, John, you have been a lion with the ferociousness of your beliefs and all the other qualities but also with a gentleness. And we salute you today. We are proud of you in good measure because you have made this institution something to be very proud of.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, the issue here is priorities and choices. There are some similarities, but the differences are vast. Let us look at the whole picture here, the whole picture. You have an alternative minimum tax that is going to hit millions of people if we do not act. We have $45 billion in extenders on which there is basic agreement. We have a reduction in the capital gains and dividends tax which continues for the next few years. We have proposed budget cuts. We also have the alleged, by the Republicans, need for fiscal discipline. So what are their choices, because you cannot really do everything. So here is their choice: extend the dividends and capital gains reduction that continues in any event, extend it to 2009 and 2010 even though over 50 percent goes to people making $1 million a year. That is their first choice. Their second choice is budget cuts: cuts in student loans, cuts in child support. And I want to say to my colleague from Michigan, administrative money for child support goes to raise money for children, not for bureaucrats. It is 4 to 5 dollars for every dollar we provide in administrative support. Essentially, what the Republicans do is to reduce the amount of money going to kids over the next 10 years by $24 billion. Their choice also was to leave out the AMT from this bill, but then they bring up a bill yesterday, do not pay for it, and it can be objected to in the Senate and may not happen at all. So their choice is clear: tax relief that goes to people making a million bucks or more and cutting student loans, cutting food support for people who need it, and cutting child support which will mean reductions of $24 billion over the next 10 years. That is what the choices are here. Mr. Speaker, they do not even maintain fiscal discipline, because if the AMT thing were to happen, it would be unpaid for and would add to the deficit. Our substitute has very different priorities. I urge its adoption.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) for the time. Workers rights matter to the rules of competition negotiated in trade agreements. In order to make globalization work, and I emphasize this, its benefits must flow broadly among the majority of the population, not flow to the top and merely trickle down to the rest. To spread the benefits of globalization, workers must have internationally recognized core labor rights: prohibitions on child labor, forced labor and discrimination, and importantly, the right of workers to associate and bargain collectively so they can advance their economic interests. This is not a pro-versus-anti-trade view. It is a view of how to expand trade in a way to spread its benefits among the population, stimulate, where it does not exist, a strong middle class necessary for a Nation's stability and, yes, the development of its democracy, provide U.S. workers with a more level playing field, and create markets of consumers with the income of other countries to buy our products. Each trade agreement presents its own challenges and opportunities. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has insisted on using a misguided, cookie-cutter approach as to the basic standard on worker rights, saying to our trading partners simply ``enforce your own laws.'' Where internationally recognized standards of workers rights were well-established in law, in practice, in a Nation's history so that there was unlikely a retreat, many of us voted yes: Chile, Singapore, Morocco. But we always warned that ``enforce your own laws'' as a standard was fundamentally an inappropriate approach and would be subject to misuse and abuse if adopted in the future under very different circumstances. That was vividly true in CAFTA, regarding the rights and position of workers. There were major gaps in the laws, in actual practices and in the socioeconomic dynamic of those Nations. So we, in the Democratic party, overwhelmingly voted no. We insisted that an unbalanced framework for expanded globalization would in Central America lead to further poverty, further insecurity and hinder democratic development. When the administration began to negotiate an FTA with Bahrain, it was clear that there existed issues unrelated to economic globalization which, if negotiated effectively, would militate in favor of approval of an FTA. Those included the end of the boycott of Israel and its impact on the movement towards security and potential peace in the Middle East and American diplomatic relations with a Nation moving faster than many others in the Middle East towards democratic processes. Also, Bahrain had taken the first steps a few years before to reform their labor code toward providing workers with their basic international rights. While the code was more advanced, it is true, than in many Middle East Nations, it still fell short in several important respects. So, in view of all these circumstances, as the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) has mentioned, a number of us chose to work with and press the Bahrainian government to bring their laws up to basic international standards. That started an intensive process where the negotiating parties did work in good faith and where the Ways and Means Committee at a hearing agreed, across party lines, that promises were not enough but that there must be concrete action on major gaps in labor laws. The Bahrainian government has now introduced concrete legislation, as Mr. Cardin has announced, to fill these gaps in their labor code. They will apply to both citizens and to the foreign workers who are there in large numbers. Bahrain is a small Nation, 667,000-plus people with over 235,000 non- nationals, with a per capita income far higher than is true in other Nations, where the majority of citizens in those Nations live in poverty, and with a constitutional monarchy whose written support of these labor reforms provide confidence that the formally introduced reforms will become law. When all of these particular circumstances are taken into account, those of us on the Democratic side of the Ways and Means Committee who have actively worked on this matter decided to support the Bahrain FTA. Our experience here, and I emphasize that, does not diminish but only reinforces our insistence that as we face far different circumstances, when achieving a positive result from expanded globalization confronts very different dynamics, and that is true in negotiations with Latin American countries and others, our Nation must do for the rights of workers what it does for all other provisions of trade agreements. It must negotiate to place these international standards squarely in the body of the trade agreement with enforcement. Only then can we be confident that globalization will help workers in other Nations uplift themselves, create a vital middle class in those Nations so important to those Nations, move towards international competition so that trade, as now increasingly being verbalized by President Bush, is both free and fair. Only then can we be confident that competition with our workers from other countries will not be based on who can most suppress the rights of other workers and that for our own businesses, in this day and age, as mentioned, of our massive trade imbalances, there will be increasing numbers of middle income residents in other Nations to buy our goods and services. Under those circumstances, I support this agreement, conditions very plainly spelled out here. I hope this administration will take notice. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore