Jim Nussle

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, we on the majority side appreciate the very strong endorsement, bipartisan way of this debt reduction bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson).

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth).

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce).

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, we are about to just say no to more spending. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Fletcher), the author of this bill.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Fletcher), the author of this legislation and somebody who does concern himself with debt reduction.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Fletcher).

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of very interesting discussion here today. You have the minority party rushing down here to support this legislation, but, boy it is tough. It is tough. I mean, the speeches we are hearing today, about, gee, we would really like to reduce the debt, but there are all these other priorities out here; and, yeah, we will vote for it, but, gosh, it is really tough. You know, it is tough. I talked to a financial planner one time about how he counsels people that find themselves in debt, and the first thing he says when he counsels people is, when you find yourselves in a hole, stop digging. That is rule number one. It makes sense. And that is what we did a few years ago. We found ourselves in deficits, we were adding to the national debt, we wanted to end that 40-year practice, and we said stop digging, balance the budget, and that is what we did. But then the second rule that the financial planner from Manchester, Iowa, taught me is he said start filling in the hole. Start filling in the hole that you dug. And you do not do that at the end of the year after you have bought all of the Girl Scout cookies; you do not do that at the end of the year after all of the things you want you have purchased and you have made decisions about. You put debt as a priority. That is the difference with this bill. The gentleman from South Carolina is exactly correct. If we did nothing else this year, the Treasury at the end of the year will take what is in excess and they will pay down the debt. There is one problem: We do not know what that excess is going to be. The difference with this bill and the difference with this Congress and the difference with this priority is that we are deciding today that debt reduction is a priority. Yes, we can wait until the end of the day, and the gentleman is correct when he said yeah, you are the majority party, you can decide whether or not you are going to spend it or not, whether you are going to use it for tax cuts or whether you are going to reduce the debt. We are deciding today. Let us reduce the debt.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share my support for H.R. 4444, legislation to amend the Trade Act of 1974 to grant normal trade relations to China. I support H.R. 4444 because I believe this legislation will not only open Chinese markets to United States products, but will also serves as the next best step we can take in our relationship with China. I believe I join all of my colleagues in saying that I have serious concerns about the Chinese government, most specifically the current trade deficit, national security concerns, and human rights violations. In 1980, we first granted China annual Most Favored Nation (MFN) status, now known more accurately as Normal Trade Relations (NTR). The nature of the annual review was supposed to give the U.S. leverage in negotiations with China. However, since then, annual renewal has become just another exercise, and I believe H.R. 4444 will put us back on the path towards results. We need to be engaged with China, and to be an influence in China in order to have an effect on how that nation governs. China is going to join the World Trade Organization regardless of what this Congress does today. The question is whether the United States is going to take advantage of China being a member of the WTO and allow our farmers and manufacturers access to this market. We know other countries will. One critical aspect of China's ascension to the WTO is that it will change the leverage. The U.S. doesn't have to stand alone anymore in our disputes with China, but rather, we will stand along with the entire 169 nations of the WTO. Everyone in this room knows that the WTO is not a perfect organization with perfect policies, but every meeting of WTO member countries brings new ideas and suggestions for improving the organization. The U.S. will sit at the table while the WTO evolves its policies and lives up to the name World Trade Organization. The only alternative, two nations battling it out, is much less effective, as history has also demonstrated. History has taught us some valuable lessons about dealing with foreign nations. We have learned from experience that isolation does not work. We don't even have to travel one hundred miles from Florida to see a perfect example of trade sanctions gone awry. The 1970s embargo against the then Soviet Union is another prime example of failed isolationism. The Soviets laughed at the U.S., while our farmers suffered. History has taught us that engagement is the key to results. Engagement allows us to address our concerns about a foreign nation's policies, all while expanding opportunities to our own farmers and manufacturers. World trade is critically important for agriculture, and 23 percent of Iowa's entire workforce is in some way tied to agriculture. Everything is connected--almost 40 percent of our entire economy relies on trade with other countries. Today's vote has been described in terms of ``granting'' something to China, but it really means jobs for Iowans and new customers for Iowa businesses. To me, the most important aspect of China's ascension is that it will even the decks on trade tariffs. For too long, the tariffs on U.S. goods going into China have proven insurmountable for farmers and manufacturers in my district who wish to export to China. The deal struck by Ambassador Barshefky will open doors that have been closed for too long. Opponents of this deal like to claim that it opens the U.S. to China. Apparently, they haven't looked at the trade agreement, and I would also guess that they haven't been out shopping since 1980. Everytime I walk in a store, I pick up products with a ``Made in China'' label on them. The agreement we are voting on today is one-way; our way. It opens the doors for America, not the doors of America. A farmer from my district, Dave Kronlage of Delaware County, traveled out to Washington on February 16, 2000, to testify before the Ways and Means Committee about China. Dave has done everything he can to profit from his business, including minimizing his risks and by joining with area farmers to create their own meat company, Delaware County Meats. Dave and other farmers, however, are running out of options for increasing their profitability. He told the Committee that China's ascension to the WTO will provide an estimated 7.7 percent increase to his income. In Dave's view, the next move belongs to Congress, and the next move will be made today. In 1996, we made farmers three promises, to reduce taxation, to reduce regulations, and improve access to foreign markets. We can stand here and argue about how successful Congress has been at the first two, but I don't think there is anyone in this body that will claim that Congress or the President has helped open new markets to farmers. Now is our chance to rectify this shortfall. My state is the nation's largest pork, corn, and soybean-producing state. Last year, China's increase in pork consumption was roughly equal to the pork produced in Iowa. Yet, we sold not one pork chop to China last year. While pork producers like Dave Kronlage saw their equity evaporate through $8 per hundredweight prices last year, trade with China was not an option. Normal trade relations with China will put Iowa pork chops, Iowa corn, and Iowa manufactured goods on the shopping lists of 1.3 billion Chinese people. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman estimates agriculture exports will triple, putting another $5 per head in the pockets of Iowa pork producers, and increasing demand for Iowa corn by 360 million bushels. That's the total annual corn production by every one of the 21 counties in Iowa's Second District. The U.S. produces far more food and manufactured goods than Americans can possibly consume. That means we have to find customers outside the boundaries of the United States. We cannot ignore 1.3 billion customers in China, watch them shop elsewhere, and expect this country to continue as a leader in the world economy. With one vote, we can hand a market of 1.3 billion people to our farmers, and simply say ``Better late than never.'' Now is the time. This is the best move to make for farmers and manufacturers in the U.S. This is the best move to make for advancing relations with China that could lead to meaningful changes in China's style of governing. And this is the best move for this Congress to make for the future of our economy. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of H.R. 4444.

Mr. NUSSLE

Mr. NUSSLE. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I would agree with the gentleman from South Carolina. That is right. To conclude, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that if there was some reality between the numbers, then I think there would be more of a reason to have them in the base bill. The frustrating thing, I think for both sides, is that these budget functions are confusing. What we tried to do is we pushed them into the report and we put the reconciliation restrictions into the base bill. That way we, as a Congress, could decide exactly what committees made those decisions, if there were changes that needed to be made. It does not change the budget function numbers. It just, to some extent we believe, makes them more realistic and makes them easier to understand. The current budget functions, as the gentleman from South Carolina knows, if we tried to add them up at the end of the year and make them fit into the budget, rarely do. They rarely have any kind of basis in reality when everything is said and done. So we felt it was important to make this more of a real document and not have the confusion that we feel was part of the original budget law, and that is the reason for that change. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox), my friend who wrote the original budget process reform bill quite a few years ago.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time. Mr. Chairman, I have an opportunity here to fix something that is broken. That is why I proposed the particular bill that I did in a bipartisan way with so many different Members. The excuses today are flying. Everyone says, well, the process is broken. Everybody admits it. There are very few coming to the floor today suggesting that it is not. The question is how do we fix it. Most of the excuses regarding this particular method of fixing it surrounds whether or not the President should be involved in the process. And the complaint is that the President should not be involved in this process. Well, wake up, my colleagues. The President is involved in this process. First, he has got to propose the budget. That is the first thing that has to happen. Is it a realistic budget? I would submit to my colleagues that there has not been a President probably since the 1970s that did not submit a political document as their draft. I see my very good friend the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations, nodding his head. Both parties, is that not true? That is what is wrong. This is not a political exercise. This should be a practical exercise. Can you imagine a family paying its bills for the mortgage, for the lights, for the gas, for the water, paying for their kids to go to college and at the end of the year they gather all those checks together and they say, ``Oh, we've got a budget. Just add all these up and that's our budget.'' That is basically what we do here. That it is okay to have the President involved at the end of the process but not at the beginning of the process I suggest to my colleagues is a fallacy. We need to include to make this process responsible to the White House and the Congress early in this process. There have been some that have suggested that in fact there would be a summit meeting. Well, heaven forbid we would actually have a conversation with the White House, be they of any particular party, prior to the last possible moment of the year when three or four people get to sit in a room and write the final bill. Folks, wake up. The process is broken, it needs to be fixed. This is an opportunity to do so. Vote for the bill.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, to me, the reason that the budget functions were removed from the budget process as part of the base bill probably makes the most sense, to me, of just about any of the provisions. And the reason is because, as a new Member of the Committee on the Budget, one of the things that I did and one of the things that my staff did as an exercise is we actually tried to make sense of the budget functions and how there was a correlation between those 20 budget functions and the 13 appropriation bills. So my colleagues understand what I am saying, let me show this chart. This is what the budget currently looks like, and what the gentlewoman is suggesting is that these budget functions need to remain in the budget that we pass. The problem is, there is not one number within these 20 budget functions that correlates to anything in reality later on in the year. In other words, let me just take an example. Income security is the budget function called budget function 600. As an example, for this last budget there was $252 billion, with a B, billion dollars, set aside for income security. Now, my colleagues might guess what that is, but let me suggest to my colleagues that, first of all, it crossed the jurisdiction of four committees, it crossed the authorizing jurisdiction of seven different committees, and let me just give my colleagues an idea of some of the things that were part of that budget function: The drug elimination grants for low-income housing was in this, Section 8 housing vouchers, homeless assistance grants, child care and development block grant. That was part of the discretionary portion of that budget function. But see if it makes sense to have, for instance, military retirement as part of that budget function. Should that not be in defense? Should that not be someplace else? Why do we have budget functions that are never used after the budget is passed? That is the question that we as a budget reform panel asked ourselves. So, instead of having budget functions that would make it even more difficult for the President and the Congress to come together and make an agreement on the budget overall, what we said was, if we really do want to illustrate these 20 different budget functions, let us include them, but let us not include them on the face sheet of the report. Let us put them in the report language. It does not mean there is not going to be income security; it does not mean there will not be agriculture; it does not mean there will not be education; it does not mean there will not be all of the other important programs. Nothing is changed. Nothing is eliminated. In fact, all of those programs can increase. What the gentlewoman is trying to include in here is included already in our bill. What we try and do, however, is take out the confusion of numbers that do not make sense to anybody after the budget is passed. So I would recommend that we vote down this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentleman from South Carolina proposed an amendment in the committee, which I thought was an interesting one when we were debating my base bill. And that is that instead of the budget functions, what we do is have the 302(b) allocations, which for everybody's edification are the amounts that are given to the different 13 appropriation subcommittees. I happened to think that was a fairly ingenious idea, because then the numbers would connect. Now, having said that, I can see the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Callahan) about ready to come out of their chairs, and I do not think we are probably going to have much success in passing that. The gentleman from Wisconsin does not need to come out of his chair, I would say, because we did not put that in there. See, I should not have even brought that up.

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

Mr. NUSSLE. Well, reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, let me advise the gentleman that they are losing.

Mr. NUSSLE. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, we have had an opportunity to look at this amendment. We think it improves and enhances this particular bill and we would like to accept this amendment. We feel that it helps us particularly with the section on oversight, and we thank the gentleman for his work on this cause.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, on the amendment that the gentleman from South Carolina was requesting unanimous consent regarding, what was the determination of the Chair?

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton). (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm). (Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Sununu), a member of the Budget Reform Task Force.