Jay Rockefeller

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I will be happy to try to answer that. First of all, included in the $179 million--which I assume came as some surprise to the Senator from Oklahoma, because that is the entire cost over the entire amendment--the scoring group took into account what would happen, for example, not with just the 125,000 we have this year, but suppose Bethlehem Steel in Maryland, as could happen, went chapter 7, went belly-up next year; the Senator from Oklahoma should know--and there might be some residuals; there might be a caretaker or grandmother who has a dependent. If that company goes belly-up, that is already included in the $179 million. They looked at the condition of what they adjudged to be the steel industry and its future, and the health care cost attending to that and made their judgment. So your question still comes back to $179 million.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. If I can answer the Senator's question, it is not any steelworker. It isn't anybody in chapter 7 or chapter 11. It is only to those who are vested, which by itself is a 15-year requirement. They get nothing that TAA, if it were to pass, would get in the way of, say, 2 years of health care. They don't get any cash. They don't get any transition. They don't get any retraining. All they get is 12 months of bridge health care, period, once.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. That is correct.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. In the underlying amendment for TAA workers who are different than steel retirees; those are active workers you are talking about. I am talking about steel retirees.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. The Senator is entirely wrong in that. I apologize to the Senator from Maryland. That is incorrect. This is not a question of something which comes up for reauthorization. This will not happen. One year, once.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. That is correct. I think I understand what the Senator is also asking. And that is, if it is a 1-year program, we are only talking about 10 years. I would be happy to hand over a chart exactly of what is proposed. In fact, the funding is zero for this year, 86 for next year, 25 for following, 15, 16, 2, and then there is a series of just dots and dashes, not contemplating that there will be anything in the succeeding 10 years. That is what it was done for. It was done for 10 years.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I also want to make one point clear. Some people say: Why can't the Department of Labor--which sort of decides on TAA matters--why doesn't it just include, administratively, steel retirees? They cannot. They do not have the power to do that. They do not have the authority to do that. The retirees we are talking about--Senator Wellstone, Senator Mikulski, myself, and Senator Stabenow, who obviously wants to say something--they do not have the power to do that. They cannot include them on their own. It can only be done through action of the Congress, which is why this amendment is before us. Back last summer, a number of us were doing the legacy bill, which is sort of the big solution, a $16 or $17 billion solution. And there is a great reason for that; it just did not happen to be a very compelling one at the time we were doing it. But you have to do three things to make steel work. I apologize to my colleague from Michigan, because I know how much she wants to speak. You have to invoke section 201. That is the International Trade Commission. The Finance Committee had voted to do that. Oddly enough, the Finance Committee has the same power under the law to invoke the International Trade Commission on the subject of imports and the damage from imports as does the President of the United States. So does the Ways and Means Committee. They did not choose to invoke it. We did. So had the President not invoked section 201, we would have, and already had voted to do so. So the same process would have taken place. The first thing you have to do is invoke section 201. What does that do for you? It gives a little bit of a lift in the market, as I indicated, for 6 or 8 months. People feel a little bit better. But it does not last. It did buy us time, and we needed time. Because we have to think, how are we going to keep the steel industry together? How can we have a 40 or 50-million-ton steel industry in a place called the United States of America, which sort of started this whole thing? All around the world, everybody, when they want to get into the United Nations, they start a steel industry and they buy a 747. Now, that is a little crude, and I apologize for saying that, but, frankly, that is what you do to establish yourself as a real country: You have a national airline--it might be one plane--and you have a steel industry. So these imports just come flowing into our country from all over the world. People underestimate the power of that. Of course, they are cheap because they are dealing with $1-an-hour labor, a little more or a little less. And then sometimes our industries have to buy that because they have to survive. So I want to stress the urgency of particularly what has happened between 1998 and 2000 and 2001, where this enormous import surge overtook the United States in steel at the same time as another surge of total neglect on the part of the Government. This is not a partisan statement about this administration. It was the same thing in the last administration. I can remember endless hours in the steel commission arguing with Bob Rubin, Gene Spurling, and Charlene Barshefsky, and all kinds of high and mighty people. And they said: No, globalization is the deal. I said: I agree; it is the deal, and I voted for PNTR, and all the rest of it. But, frankly, we have something called a steel industry in Senator Stabenow's State and my State, and it is sort of the heart and soul of America. But they were not interested. I think Senator Wellstone's $800 million figure was, in fact, e- mailed by the White House to a whole lot of Senate offices just as late as this afternoon, trying, again, to scare us away from this amendment based on cost. I will just end with this thought. It almost seems impossible we would be bringing an amendment to this body, an amendment which only affects 125,000 people at the present time, and they have to go through so much to even qualify. They have to have worked in the mill 15 years, and all the rest of it. And if the mill goes chapter 7--that is, goes belly-up, completely--it has to do so by January of 2001. And then it only lasts until January 1 of 2004. That means, if a West Virginia plant or a Michigan plant went belly-up and shut out the lights, sent out pink slips, with no health benefits, nothing, everything goes. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation does take care of the pensions, but nobody takes care of health care. Nobody takes care of health care for these people. We still provide this amendment, which is so tightly constricted to 125,000 people, costing $179 million over 10 years. Frankly, I don't know why the White House does not say: We want this. We accept this. We will take credit for it. It is a no-brainer. Yet, obviously, it is the subject of filibustering and all kinds of divisions. And I regret that very much. There is really nothing quite like a steelworker. They sweat and toil, as you can imagine. It is so dangerous. They lose arms, fingers, legs. They work in 125 to 130-degree heat in the summer. I am not pleading for them. I am just simply saying that when their company goes belly-up because of Government inaction, by not enforcing the Federal laws against imports, they deserve--if not to get cash, if not to get training, if not to get other benefits--at least to get health care benefits. I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I also called Governor Bob Taft of Ohio yesterday afternoon. I told him we have this situation, we have this amendment. Yes, of course, LTV is located in his State, but that doesn't mean necessarily all the 85,000 steel retirees are located in his State. I met Governor Taft back in the 1960s. I don't know him well, but he is a fine Governor. He is a conservative Governor, a responsible Governor, and he did something I thought very unusual. What I was asking for was a letter of support for my amendment. The Governor gets this phone call from some United States Senator at 6 o'clock in the evening saying: Can I have a letter from you by noon? That is when this Senator thought we were going to be doing this legislation today. He sent it. He sent it to Senator Voinovich, which is what he should have done. He is a cosponsor of the bill. But in it he says: Retired steel workers, similar to their currently employed counterparts [active workers], are suffering irreparable harm as a result of unfair trade practices. This amendment offers temporary relief for those retirees in the greatest need. I urge you to support this amendment and thank you for your attention to this important issue. He says a lot of good things about the amendment. I ask unanimous consent that also be printed in the Record.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. As to the matter of how much it costs each family, that is not yet available because the circumstances vary enormously. Sometimes there might be a little bit of health care left over. In virtually all cases, there was none left over. The fact is the Joint Tax Committee, which looked at this in a rather conservative fashion, came out with a $179 million cost over a period of 10 years. I don't think the Senator from Oklahoma would challenge that.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I also ask to have a letter from the vice chairman, president, and CEO of Nucor, which is the largest minimill in the United States, be printed in the Record. In the steel industry you have some conflict between integrated steel mills and minimills which take scrap and turn it into steel. It is an arcane but nevertheless very real conflict. I called Dan DiMicco in California about this amendment. He has written me a letter saying they have no problem with it at all. In no way will they oppose this proposal. Nucor has long advocated consideration must be made for displaced steel workers or retirees in transition due to permanent plant closures. One of the reasons he is for this is a point I made earlier. This money does not go to companies. It does not go to integrated steel companies or minimills. It goes to human beings. I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in the Record.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. If one takes the scoring of this offset, one could posture that, and one could also raise the question that it might not happen. They were trying to figure out as best they could--and who can figure these things out absolutely perfectly--what is likely to happen in the steel industry and what the health care consequences are for retirees. All of that fits within the $179 million.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I am answering, if the Senator would allow me to answer the question the way I would like to. That can provide health care for a couple of years, but not with the steelworker retirees. That is only a 12-month period, and that is it, once.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. If the underlying amendment, referring to the TAA in general and health care, prevailed----

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Over a period of 10 years.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I would like to introduce a few things in the Record. First, I ask unanimous consent Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania be added as a cosponsor. He is the cochair of the steel caucus.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I rise this afternoon to talk for a few minutes about the need for trade adjustment assistance as a program and also an addition to it, something that meets the real needs of workers as currently contemplated, and then what is also contemplated in our amendment which is to add, at very small cost, about 125,000 steel retirees. I want to talk about them. Their health benefits have been lost due to the import surge that has taken place. I passionately believe the trade adjustment assistance concept has to be considered an integral part of U.S. trade policy. When U.S. trade policies result in American workers losing their jobs through no fault of their own, much less Government inaction to protect them in a legitimate forum, then I think we owe them help. I want to take a moment to highlight the importance of the TAA health provisions that will hopefully be included in the final package the Senate passes. Majority Leader Daschle, Chairman Baucus, Senators Bingaman, Conrad, Mikulski, Wellstone, myself, and many others have fought to include health protection as part of TAA for the first time. Workers want to get it. If workers lose their jobs as a result of imports, they deserve to get something back. They deserve to be on their feet, they deserve to have access to retraining, and they deserve to get cash assistance. They also deserve to have something called health care, which is what everybody talks about and nobody does anything about, but we would like to. What has been lacking has been some help for displaced workers to retain their health care coverage. I am not talking about just steelworkers, I am talking about the general population. Under the Baucus-Grassley amendment that is under consideration now, they will have that help. I want to extend my sincere appreciation to the majority leader for his advocacy for provisions to provide health care assistance to displaced workers who lose jobs due to imports. This is a tremendous improvement to the existing program. I also thank him, as I believe all steelworkers do and should, for his support of our upcoming amendment that will extend the new TAA health benefit for steel retirees who have also lost their retirement health coverage due to closure of their former employer. The majority leader had originally agreed to include this as a provision in his substitute amendment. But as we all know, that effort was undermined by a point of order and a threatened filibuster. So we had to make an adjustment. The majority leader agreed to support the inclusion of the steel retiree health benefit as part of the overall Trade Adjustment Assistance Program because he understands what is at stake. He understands that steel retirees have lost their health benefits as a direct result of imports--the most ferocious assault of imports, with a blind eye from the U.S. Government and, particularly in the last several years, just as surely as TAA-eligible workers, active workers, lost their jobs because of imports. If steel retirees have lost their health care coverage because their company closed as a result of this massive insurge of imports, they should get some temporary relief. In fact, we are giving them only bridge relief--1 year's relief--but it is a full year, which they would not now have. I am talking about 125,000 people right now in the country. They would get 1 year's health benefits. This amendment would provide it to them. As we seek to improve benefits for employees who lose their jobs because unfair--and in many cases illegal--imports have ravaged their industry, we cannot forget the former employees of these same industries--the retirees. Under the current TAA system, an active worker can get help in health care--if we pass it--because they are displaced by imports, but retirees are left behind. The people who have gone belly up and who are no longer working at all but who worked for years and years in the steel mills got nothing; they are shut out. The pending amendment will eliminate that disparity by affording retirees access to health care coverage that displaced workers hopefully will soon also be able to receive. If a steelworker retires and they have lost their health care because their company closed, they will now be eligible to receive the same temporary health benefits for 1 year as other workers--active workers who have lost their jobs and health coverage due to imports. These steelworker retirees are also victims of imports. They have lost health care because their companies closed. Their companies closed because the import crisis in the domestic steel industry became overwhelming. I call it a crisis because the International Trade Commission called it a crisis and said unanimously that it was due to serious damage caused by imports, imports from which our Government-- not just this administration but the previous one--failed to defend American interests. We have national laws on our books. We failed to defend them. They don't allow other countries to dump their steel products into our country. We failed to defend that. That is not true in other cases particularly, but it is true with steelworkers. They have been clobbered by this, and they have no health care retiree ability whatsoever right now. Health care coverage for steel retirees, who often live on fixed incomes, is incredibly important to them. It can mean the difference between all kinds of things that make their lives miserable or OK. I want to clarify this because it is confusing. Whom are we talking about in this amendment? Active workers and retirees. Active workers is the TAA category; active retirees is the steel category. Those are the people we want to add to the TAA for 1 year. Active workers who lose their jobs are not retirees, they are unemployed workers. Retirees--the steel folks--have met years-of- service requirements--vested 15 years working and this kind of thing-- and they are out in the cold. Now their companies have closed and, for the most part, have filed chapter 7. LTV in Ohio filed for chapter 7-- no health benefits, no light bulbs, nothing; everything is shut down. The health benefits they used to plan for in their retirement are now gone. These are not people who can retain and find new jobs, they are retirees who have finished, for the most part, their working years. Under the new and improved TAA program, for active workers, if a worker loses his job, he will now be eligible for cash assistance, retraining, and health benefits. In the case of a retiree in the steel industry, they may not be eligible for any retirement benefits from the job that they have lost, and under the current plan retirees are eligible for nothing at all--unless my amendment is adopted, and that will only be for health, not for cash, not for training, or anything else. The money will only go to the retiree, not to the company. Retirees are eligible under my amendment for the TAA health benefits only if they were already eligible, going through this vested process, for retiree health benefits and if their former employer permanently shut down. We have created a small universe of 125,000 people. When I get to the offset in a minute, people are going to be shocked by how cheap it is, how easy it is to do. But the steel retirees will not be eligible for any of the cash assistance, or anything else that active workers who are otherwise displaced under the TAA will get. Active workers are eligible for TAA health assistance for the duration of the TAA cash assistance, which goes on. On the other hand, eligible steel retirees-- the subject of our amendment--would only be eligible for 1 year of health benefits. That was the bridge we talked about, to give everybody a chance to regroup and see what we can do to retain the steel industry and for them to be able to get health care. So this isn't a Cadillac plan we are talking about. This is a slimmed down version. If retirees don't have health care coverage because companies shut down due to imports, they should not be left behind-- particularly when the Government is responsible for not defending their interests over the past 30 years and not protecting the Federal law against dumping and willingly letting people do it. Of course, in the United States we are suckers for anything that is cheaper. It doesn't matter if it was made in America. Well, it matters in the steel industry, and we are about to lose it. Thirty-three companies have shut down in the last couple of years, and most of the others are on the brink. We could very well have no steel industry in 2, 3 years. Today, there are only about 125,000 retirees. That is what my amendment is about, along with Senator Mikulski and Senator Wellstone. So 125,000 retirees and their dependents, who worked for companies such as LTV in the steel industry do not have any health coverage. They have not, in fact, had any for the last several months, since March. These people live in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Alabama, Illinois, Utah, Louisiana, North Carolina, Missouri, and they do not at this point live in West Virginia. Without the steel retiree provision in this bill, those retirees will continue to go without health care. Is that what we do here? Is that what we do as a legislative body? Many of these retirees are not Medicare eligible and have no other recourse. We all know about the terrible human scourge of Americans without health care coverage. We have done a lot of talking about that, but we have not done much to cure it. This is not what retirees who spent a lifetime working in the harsh conditions of a steel mill--which my colleagues, Senators Mikulski and Wellstone, have been in. Many others have, too. I have not. It is like a coal mine; you do not go in very often. It is dangerous, terrible work. They helped us win the war, and now we have a chance to do something for them. I come back to the fact that the Federal Government has failed the steel industry by not enforcing our national trade laws against dumping, which is what puts them out of work. Steel companies were forced into bankruptcy--as I said, 33 companies since the year 2000-- because our trading partners were dumping steel on our shores, and this is not my opinion. This is what the International Trade Commission found unanimously: That our industry had been seriously injured by imports. Because of the Government's inaction for so long on those unfair trading practices by our trading partners, our domestic steel industry has suffered irreparable harm. People look at that and say: OK, we do not have steel in our State; maybe it is true, maybe it is not. It is true. The Presiding Officer knows it. It is absolutely true. They are falling like flies. Their stock is selling at $1, $2. It is awful. Section 201 gave them a little bit of a boost, but it is a boost that will only last 6 or 8 months or a year at most, and then it will go right back down. Here we come to the workhorse. The provision is simply this. The provision will give retirees, many of whom are entering, as I indicated, their second month without health care coverage--85,000 of these workers are former LTV workers, which went chapter 7. They were in Ohio or they may have moved elsewhere. It tries to give them some breathing room. They will receive the same benefit we are giving TAA-eligible workers to keep their health care. It will allow these retirees some time to figure out how to secure other forms of health insurance. It will allow us who care about the steel industry to figure out how we keep them together in America so we can consolidate and keep a steel industry which a country such as America ought to have. The amendment has been officially scored by the Joint Tax Committee as costing--and please listen--$179 million over 10 years. The White House has been putting out figures six, seven times as large. It is dramatically less than what people claim this provision would cost-- $179 million over 10 years. It is paid for with two IRS administrative positions. The offset is in. It is there. It allow taxpayers to accelerate their payments to the IRS if they so choose to do that. Under current law, they cannot do that. The House has already passed this. They have already agreed to it. It was one of Chairman Bill Thomas's ideas. I do not believe any of my colleagues will object to this pay-for and should understand we worked hard to find agreeable offsets, thanks primarily to Chairman Baucus and his staff. This amendment improves upon an essential reform of our existing TAA program. It gives us health care. It targets temporary assistance to those who really need it. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment for retirees who are entitled to our help. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, today I introduce legislation requested by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, as a courtesy to the Secretary and the Department of Veterans Affairs, VA. Except in unusual circumstances, it is my practice to introduce legislation requested by the administration so that such measures will be available for review and consideration. This ``by-request'' bill contains four sections, which amend existing sections or provisions of title 38. The first section would expand the Secretary of Veterans Affairs' authority to pay plot and interment allowances to State veterans cemeteries for all eligible peacetime veterans. Currently, the Secretary can only provide a plot allowance if the veteran served during wartime, was discharged for a service- connected disability, was receiving VA disability compensation or pension, or died in a VA facility. This amendment would facilitate States' participation in VA's State Cemeteries Grant Program, SCGP. Under the SCGP, VA pays for the construction of the cemetery, but the States bear the future maintenance costs. This provision would allow States to receive allowances for approximately 1,200 additional interments annually. The second section of this bill would authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to lease the undeveloped land and unused or underused buildings of the National Cemetery System and retain the proceeds from these leases, as well as agricultural licenses. The National Cemetery Administration, NCA, is endowed with thousands of acres of land, some of which is unused because it is not suitable for NCA development or has not yet been developed for NCA use. Currently, the NCA is authorized to issue limited-term agricultural licenses for these lands, and all profits must be deposited with the U.S. Treasury. However, some NCA land would be suitable for other purposes. This provision is meant to provide the Secretary with greater flexibility in using NCA lands to generate revenues, while allowing the NCA to become more self- sufficient by keeping profits within the administration. The third section of this bill would modify amendments made by the Veterans' Claims Assistance Act of 2000, VCAA, which imposed a 1-year time limit for veterans to submit evidence--such as medical records-- necessary to substantiate their claims for benefits. Prior to the enactment of the VCAA, a 1-year time limitation was imposed on information--such as complete contact information--necessary to complete a veteran's application for benefits. This provision was not included in the VCAA. The Secretary asserts that this requires VA to keep claims open indefinitely if they lack information for the application, while not allowing VA to make a payment on a claim that required the veteran to submit evidence to substantiate it, even if the claim could be granted on other grounds. This provision would reinstate the original time limitation on information for applications and rescind the current limitation on evidence to substantiate. Section four of this bill would eliminate the reporting requirement on certain advance planning projects. Currently, VA cannot obligate more than $500,000 from its advance planning fund without submitting a report on the proposed obligation to both committees of Congress. However, VA argues that such reports are redundant for projects that have already been authorized by Congress, creating unnecessary and untimely delays. Accordingly, VA proposes that Congress eliminate this reporting requirement for already authorized projects. Again, Mr. President, I submit this for the review and consideration of my colleagues at the request of the administration. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and Secretary Principi's transmittal letter that accompanied the draft legislation be printed in the Record.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, yesterday the President made very clear what we have all known for a long time in steel country, and that is that he basically does not care whether the American steel industry goes to Japan, Korea, Brazil, Russia, or some other place; that he is willing to see it go as an industry but, much more importantly in terms of my comments, that he is willing to consider perhaps TAA health care benefits for workers who have been destroyed by illegal importing problems. But steelworkers do not count. He specifically, in his statement of administration policy, said: I don't want steelworkers to have any health care retirement--retirement in the sense they do not have any more health benefits. I don't care about them. I want the Record to be crystal clear on that. It is a sad position. It is a terrible day for steel. Somebody is going to get up today, they are going to make a motion, and it is going to be a point of order probably. I don't know when it will happen, who will do it, or how it will happen, but I want my colleagues to be aware of the situation. Abandoning steelworkers, not allowing them to have health care coverage--we are only talking about 125,000 people as we start the process, none of whom, incidentally, is from the State I represent, the State of West Virginia. But they are just being excluded from the process. TAA is a wonderful program. We recognize when people are thrown out of work due to imports, they need certain protections. Health care certainly needs to be one of those protections. Unfortunately, TAA does not cover, under its definition, retirees. It only covers active workers, not retirees. You say retirees, that must be somebody who is in their seventies or eighties, and we should not be doing that here. But it is a very different situation in steel. A retiree in steel might be 35 years old, but the company went chapter 7. That means they turned out the lights, closed the door, pink slips, no health benefits, everything shut down-- no bankruptcy problems, just no more existence. The steelworkers go. They are called retirees, but in fact they are people, younger than average age, but out of health care. I think it is outrageous. The steelworkers in fact were subjected to import surges which broke American Federal law, the 1974 Trade Act. Other countries did it at will. Our administration has refused to enforce that. So we have dumped steel, which has thrown people out of work. The administration then says: No, steelworkers cannot have health care benefits. I do not understand how people come to think that way, what their value system is. But it is very clear in steel country that the President of the United States has abandoned the steelworkers of America and that he has abandoned people who have been already thrown out of work and who have no health care benefits, and have children to feed, even as he contemplates reluctantly the idea of doing health care benefits for other eligible active workers. Let me say this. The President got a lot of credit in steel country for doing something called section 201. It was taking the dumping crisis, the illegal dumping crisis, before the International Trade Commission. He got a lot of credit for that. He pretty much had to do that, I would say--on political grounds, No. 1. But more importantly, the Finance Committee had already voted to do it. The Finance Committee has the same standing legally under the law as does the President, so it was going to happen anyway. So the result would have been the same. The International Trade Commission would have voted unanimously the steel industry was grievously injured by imports and people were hurting badly. He did that knowing that it would make him somewhat popular in steel country because people were saying: Gee, we just solved the problem. It is not even the beginning of the problem. All that did was buy us time. We have three steps we have to accomplish. One is we have to do section 201, which buys us time to consider health care costs, which we have to consider if we are going to have consolidation in the steel industry to preserve an American steel industry. It is sort of one of the great basic industries of this country. We just passed a farm bill yesterday dumping billions and billions of dollars on farms for the hundredth consecutive year. Yet there was no consideration whatsoever for steelworkers. I find that very odd, even as my colleagues make these kinds of judgments. So, No. 1, he did section 2101. He had to do that. He had no choice politically or procedurally. It just bought us some time. But we have to go on to retirement health care costs. He has washed his hands of that. He says: I want nothing to do with it. He actually writes in the statement of administrative--whatever the word is--practice that he particularly opposes the majority leader's amendment which would include retired steelworkers. He makes that very clear. He wants them cut out of the deal. He wants them excluded. That is only 125,000 and would probably cost $200 million or $300 million. I think the farm bill we passed yesterday was $100 billion over 10 years. The proportion in sort of the human dimension of this is rather extraordinary. The President has also done a lot of tariff exclusions. He has taken a lot of countries out of section 201 that had to pay tariffs because they were illegally dumping steel in the United States and putting our workers out of work. He started to exempt different countries. He has different requirements for that--again, I think in violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the 1974 Trade Act. All of us have asked him to stop that. Again, he has washed his hands of steel. He has washed his hands, more importantly, of the steelworkers who can also be called human beings with families--people. It doesn't have to be an industry. They are called human beings. They are Americans. They pay taxes. They do things right. They work in a very dangerous industry. So do farmers. Is a farmer more vulnerable than a steelworker? I do not know. Maybe a farmer is, but not where I come from. I very much regret this action on his part. Let me conclude by saying this: We now know that the President doesn't have a commitment to steelworkers and to the steel industry. We know he has no regard for how people's lives and entire communities are going to be affected. I have believed that for a long time. Now it is proven. It is clear. He is moving aggressively with the help of some of our colleagues, unfortunately--most of them on the other side but a couple on this side--to simply walk away from steelworkers. I think that is a kind of betrayal by somebody who claimed to be a friend of the steel industry. The President and the Vice President were in steel country in my part of the world a number of times saying how important steel was to the national defense, how it is basic to Americans, and how they were not going to let them down. When push came to shove, they let them down. They made it very clear. I want to be incisively precise about that as we start this Thursday so that the people of America understand that. I don't understand sometimes how people make decisions and what their value systems are, and what kind of fairness is within the fair trade or free trade system. But I do know this: The administration has abandoned any semblance of fairness toward some very decent people in this country called steelworkers. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I notice that we are joined on the floor by the distinguished Chairman and Ranking Member of the Finance Committee, two gentlemen who have a lot to say about which tax legislation passes this body. I am pleased that both are cosponsors of S. 88 and strong supporters of technology measures. I wonder if I could ask them their thoughts on the likelihood of passing the broadband credit this year.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I would be happy to do so, and I thank the Senator from Massachusetts. For years now, it has been a goal of mine to make sure that West Virginians, and indeed all Americans, can have access to technology. The primary reason I introduced the broadband tax credit is to help address some of the most intractable problems associated with our country's transition to the digital economy--unequal availability of broadband access technologies. This tax credit will encourage deployment of broadband facilities in areas where such technologies have not, and, without Congressional action, perhaps will not, be made available. With the help of the tax credit, people and businesses in these areas will be able to more fully benefit from the networked economy, and from activities such as telemedicine, telecommuting, and distance learning. This has positive consequences for everyone--not just those in rural areas--that go beyond the marketplace. I also think it important to understand that this technology will also be an important driver of productivity and economic growth. According to the Federal Reserve, information technology accounted for over 60 percent of the productivity growth occurring from 1995 to 1999. Listen to the change that occurred at that time. During the first half of the 1990s, productivity increased on average only 1.5 percent per year. Then, when we began to link our computers over the Internet, productivity jumped to 2.8 percent in the second half of the decade. It is this increase which Fed economists attribute primarily to information technology, and I think it is very fair to expect that wide-spread broadband networks are going to make us that much more efficient because they move us beyond using the Internet for e-mail to much more substantive and sophisticated applications. And the economic value of that to us as a nation could be very significant. One economist, Robert Crandall of the Brookings Institute, estimates that accelerated deployment of broadband will generate up to $500 billion in economic growth annually. But the other side of this is that if we do not deploy broadband quickly, and other nations do, then we will lose the productivity edge that is so important. And unfortunately, that appears to be happening. A recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that the United States is now fourth in the world in broadband deployment, behind Korea, Canada, and Sweden. And others may pass us soon. While only 10 percent of U.S. households have broadband access, some 20 percent of homes in Canada have it, as do an astonishing 50 percent of homes in South Korea. Japan and a number of European countries have adopted very aggressive plans for broadband deployment involving laying optical fiber to every home. We should be very aware that if other countries do that--deploy fiber to all homes and businesses within their borders--and we continue to move very slowly even in the deployment of slower, current-generation broadband, those other nations will gain a huge economic advantage over us. I thus see the broadband tax credit as presenting us with a double opportunity. It would help provide much-needed economic growth. And it will also help ensure that rural and underserved Americans can fully participate in an increasingly digital world.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. I would be happy to.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. My friend is correct. I agree with him wholeheartedly. That is exactly the kind of application that will make a big difference to my constituents and his, and I want to do everything I can to make it widely available across the United States.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Exactly right, and I think that this shows the potential that exists if broadband becomes ubiquitously deployed in this country. When we can transmit massive amounts of data instantaneously, the applications are limited only by our imaginations.