Daniel Moynihan

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. They spend their time sending us delegations.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes. May I ask how much time the Senators from Iowa and North Dakota wish?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I get to the point, and I don't make it in any hostile manner. I just say the complexities of the world, just that part of it, are very considerable. I am reluctant to see such categories enter trade law. No one has ever asked whether the products of the American clothing workshops in New York City were made by American citizens. There surely would have been a time when the majority--or many of them--were not American citizens at all. They would have come from what would become Poland, and there was no concept of citizenship for the occupants of the shtetls. I just suggest there is considerable ambiguity. I don't wish to press the matter. I yield the floor.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I am aware of that, and I recognize that is a very reasonable thought. But I do know, from some experience in that part of the world, that citizenship is not a standard statutory entitlement of the individual, as it would be--well, even in our country, if you come here, you have to go through a great deal to become a citizen. If you are born here, you already are. That can be a very ambiguous situation, sir. I don't know. May I ask my friend, are Mauritians Africans or Indians? One of the big issues, I can say to the Presiding Officer, is that in Mauritius a considerable textile trade has developed with Mauritian sponsors and Chinese migrant workers. Are Mauritians Africans?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. If you are on the Indian Ocean, how sure are you that you are in Africa?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I join the chairman in urging this matter be tabled. We have a fine underlying bill and we hope to take it to conference with as little encumbrance as can be, certainly none to which there would be instant objection on the House side. I yield the floor.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I don't wish to suggest there is anything but good intentions behind all these measures. But to introduce the idea of--is it citizenship we are talking about, ancestry, or what? What is an African, sir? South Africa would be part of the arrangements in this African Growth Act. Suppose there was a plant in Johannesburg that was owned by the descendants of Dutch settlers who arrived in the 17th century; some of the managers were Indian persons who had emigrated in the 19th century under the British Empire--under the British Empire, people moved all over the world. We recently had the great honor of meeting, just off the Senate Chamber, with heads of state from the Caribbean area, and the President of Trinidad and Tobago is of Indian ancestry. That is very normal. Indians moved to California, having gone to the British Empire and gone to Canada and were coming down. And suppose there were Zulu workers there--African, obviously, but they are more recent arrivals than most.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. There may have been a time--yes, there was, in the era of a planned economy, in the era of the Soviet Union, in another era. Are we debating another era? We are going to ask the President, under one of these amendments--I have lost track which one--to negotiate 147 reciprocal trade treaties-- 147--and then, sir, in one of them--I will not say which, because I do not think it would be quite fair--but in one of them, for the third act of imported children's wear, that somehow involves textiles made in the Far East or wherever, the violation is punishable by a fine of $1 million and 5 years in prison. Do we send people to prison for the mislabeling of cotton goods? I mean, heavens, a little balance, a little perspective. We are talking about marginal producers on the margin of the world economy, trying to give them a hand. In the case of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, we are trying to do what President Reagan said was only fair and balanced: If we were going to have the North American Free Trade Agreement, it should not close out Central America and the Caribbean. I hope we will proceed as long as we have to with such amendments, but I hope some perspective will be in order.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, may we have order. The chairman is about to speak.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I have just a couple of points to make about this extender bill. First, my congratulations to our revered chairman of the Finance Committee, who brought all sides together in a consensus bill that accomplishes our objective--extend expiring provisions that command support from all Senators. This was not a simple task. Tax extenders were part of the large tax bill that began working its way through the Congress in July--a bill that in my view needed to be and was vetoed. This fall, Senator Roth returned to the task and presented a chairman's mark focused on extenders. He built bipartisan support for the bill, and that is why we are here on the Senate floor so soon, ready to pass the legislation by unanimous consent. This bill is a paid-for extenders package. As such, it meets the standards of Members on both sides of the aisle. It is a bill that can pass this Congress and can be signed by the President. And it is important that we pass legislation that can be signed. If we do not, approximately 1.1 million Americans will find out that they will lose part or all of the $500 child credit or the HOPE scholarship credit when they sit down to complete their 1999 tax return. That is because these credits have not yet been permanently exempted from what we call the alternative minimum tax. This legislation will exempt these credits from the alternative minimum tax for 1999 and 2000. The American people ask us to be responsible in managing our tax laws. To not pass this bill would be irresponsible and contribute to a perception that Members of Congress who agree on what should be done cannot sit down and figure out a way to do them. Again, my congratulations to the chairman, and let's move expeditiously to a conference with the House of Representatives as soon as they pass similar legislation.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. No.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. That do not now exist.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. At least 75.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. And here we are.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will the revered chairman yield for a question?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Would he not estimate there are 75 votes for this measure in the Senate?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, there are more than just prospective benefits for American workers in this legislation, on this Trade and Development Act of 1999. We now have 7 days before the Trade Adjustment Assistance program is ended, a program that goes back 37 years to the Trade Expansion Act that President Kennedy obtained in his first term-- the only real measure he did in his first term--37 years and as many Presidents as you can count, with 200,000 persons and their families eligible for benefits. The funding ends on Friday. More than that, we have put in jeopardy this morning--and it remains in jeopardy--trade policies of the last two-thirds of a century. In that two-thirds of a century, we have seen America rise to unknown and previously inconceivable levels of economic growth and stability. This very morning the press reports, I will read from the New York Times: Headline: ``Strong summer is likely to propel the economic boom to a record.'' The story: ``The American economy turned in its best quarterly performance of the year this summer, virtually guaranteeing enough momentum to carry the nation to its longest economic expansion in history early next year.'' By February--that is not very long--we shall have had the longest expansion in the history of the Nation. Sir, I want to stand alongside my chairman and say this is not over. It cannot be over. Do we have any idea what is at stake? Can you imagine going to Seattle having denied the President--not this President, whoever, the next President--having denied the Executive the power to negotiate trade agreements at the Seattle Round--as it could be commonly called-- and the fast track is not in the President's court? And then the matter that we took up today. It is a great effort on sub-Saharan Africa. We had the President of Nigeria here yesterday. We have had ambassadors from all over sub-Saharan Africa. The Caribbean Basin Initiative, President Reagan's initiative, sir--the new benefits that we ought to put in place--are gone. The representatives of at last democratic regimes in Central America came up, sir, at your invitation--gone. Trade Adjustment Assistance is gone. The Generalized System of Preferences--how old is that? A quarter of a century of the Generalized System of Preferences is gone, emptyhanded. The chairman and I were planning to spend a few days in Seattle just meeting with people. We were not going to speak. Dare we go? I suppose Ambassador Barshefsky is required to go. I don't want to show my face. But that need not be. We are still in session. The bill is still on the calendar. Let us hope what we have done this weekend we can move to change it, and move on as we were moving. I thank you, sir. No one could lead it better than the chairman did-- events over which he has no control. The tangle we can get into with people who sometimes think one issue is more important than others. We have to rise to this, sir. I hope we will. I yield the floor.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. MOYNIHAN

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Right.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. Chairman, we have now reached the point where you and I are alone on the Senate floor as one of the epic decisions of this decade is about to be made. One asks Senators who might be listening: Where are you? But the answer to your question, sir, is our learning has truly expanded. We know more about this. I mentioned 1933. In that year, John Maynard Keynes published a book in the United States called ``Essays In Persuasion.'' It appeared the previous year in Britain. He already had a pretty good record. He wrote that great essay, ``The Economic Consequences of the Peace''--of Versailles. He was on the British delegation as an adviser, and he said: It is going to be awful. Germany is not going to get over this. That is a very famous essay--and it is sort of a joke. Winston Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer around 1926 and went back, took Britain back on the gold standard. He wrote an essay called ``The Economic Consequences Of Mr. Churchill,'' which he thought were pretty grim. And they were. But, in 1933, in this book, ``Essays In Persuasion,'' he had an introduction. It is really essays over the years. He said: The economic problem is just a giant muddle. He said: We will figure it out. We will get through it. He said: I estimate by about the year 2030, we will have it pretty well under control and we can go on to other issues in life. The Senator mentioned the existing expansion, the period of expansion. In February of the coming year, that will be in about 4 months, we will completed a period of sustained growth of 107 months, the longest in history--unless we start killing it, which is what we seem intent on doing. Of course there are dislocations brought about by trade. Joseph Schumpeter--had it not been for the Great Depression it is generally thought Schumpeter would be regarded as the greatest economist of the 20th century. He is an Austrian, ended up a professor at Harvard. In his book ``Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy,'' he speaks a phrase now in wide use, of the ``creative destruction of capitalism.'' Sure, there comes a time when shipping the cotton to mills in New England no longer makes sense. They want to have mills in South Carolina. ``Bring the mills to the cotton,'' as the phrase was. It did make sense. The next thing you know you had empty mills all up and down the river in Lowell, MA, and, I might say, in Gloversville, NY, and such like. Yes, but did that put an end to life in Massachusetts? No. The next thing you know, Route 128 is creating enormous economic growth spurred on by computer companies. That destruction is creative because it brings better uses of resources into play. You get more than you had. Trying to keep just what you had is a formula for ruin--well, not for ruin, but for stagnation. I speak with some temerity. I was once our Ambassador to India, and I saw it happen. Tariffs you could not get through, government purchasing. The Soviet Union----

Mr. MOYNIHAN. In 1934.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. The Soviet Union, sir, what was that? Oh, yes, that was the place that was going to take over the world. I remember a meeting in Bucharest of world trade advocates at the time. It was an international conference about the developing world. The Soviet delegate absolutely swept the conference with an announcement that, as of this moment, as a gesture of solidarity with our friends in Africa, in Latin America, in Southeast Asia, the Soviet Union is abolishing all tariffs of imports from those countries. The conference went wild, but no one stopped to think: But, wait a minute, the Soviet Union doesn't have tariffs. Everything is bought by the government and put through collective enterprises, all of which were in ruins and eventually collapsed. This was 20 years before the whole system imploded. We are talking for democracy, talking for vitality, talking for expansion, talking for a tradition. As Jerry Ford said yesterday in the Rotunda, he came to Congress as a social moderate, a fiscal conservative, and a determined internationalist. He was right. Can it be we have forgotten all that? I say, again, before I yield the floor, at a critical moment in our economic history--a critical moment--we are hours away from ruinous indecision. There are three Senators on the floor. It happens we are all friends, perhaps have gotten to be more friends because we have been on the floor together for 2 days now. It is hard to understand.