Science, State, Justice, Commerce, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006
SCIENCE, STATE, JUSTICE, COMMERCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 15, 2005)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I offer this amendment which transfers all of the funding for economic service officer positions in the Department of State, transfers their funds, $131 million for those positions, to the Foreign Commercial Service operation, which is under the Department of Commerce. I do so because this 5 or 10 minutes that we have here to discuss on this amendment is probably the only discussion we will have on this entire bill relating to our trade deficit and the inability of the United States to compete in international markets.
I would venture to say very few Members of Congress have a clue as to what the Foreign Commercial Service does or where it is positioned. The Foreign Commercial Service, which has been around for some time and has bounced around from the Department of Commerce to the Department of State, is our number one means of assistance to particularly medium and small businesses overseas to assist in promoting U.S. exports and businesses in those localities.
Our trade deficit last month, I believe, was $57 billion. We will exceed a trade deficit in the United States of over $600 billion this year. We only have 76 countries in which we have
[Page: H4501]
Foreign Commercial Service operations. We only have officers in 76 countries. In 96 countries, the Department of State has that responsibility. I would not mind if the Department of State had that responsibility, but from my personal experience of dealing in international trade, our system of promoting, assisting, financing and negotiating in international trade is dysfunctional at best.
We have these 98 countries, and I will include this list as part of the RECORD, that have no Foreign Commercial Service operations. It is handled by the State Department. If I thought the State Department considered this a priority in promoting trade in U.S. business, or we had the best personnel to assist in doing business, I would not be here. Here is the response I got from the Department of State on the number of positions they have:
There are currently 1,319 Foreign Service officers with economics specialization. List of overseas economic positions and posts where the State Department performs the commercial functions are enclosed. As you can see, the number of economic positions overseas, only 497, is considerably less than the number of Foreign Service officers with an economic specialty, 1,319. The difference is accounted for by the fact that many economic officers are entry-level officers who in their first one or two tours in the Foreign Service fill rotational or consular positions. Other economics officers are stationed in Washington; others are participating in long-term training or performing other noneconomic jobs overseas, and so forth.
That is not a priority. We have the emerging markets around the world in which we have not a priority nor no Foreign Commercial Service officer operating. This is a simple amendment. It transfers those, sometimes they call them bean counters, and in some countries the economic officers do do a very good job, but I am saying in most countries we do not even have and in emerging markets we do not even have a Foreign Commercial Service officer.
Finally, I have a chart that shows the level of funding for international trade promotion and assistance positions and the deficit. As we keep the level of personnel dealing with assisting business and particularly medium and small business at the lowest possible level, you can see that our trade deficit explodes.
Mr. Chairman, 19 of 20 consumers in the future are outside our borders. I cannot fault the appropriators alone because this is also authorization responsibility, but it is multijurisdictional. But no one is taking it within their turf to do anything about this, so I propose today that we take the economic officers who do not have this as a priority in the Department of State and transfer them to the Department of Commerce under the Foreign Commercial Service Office.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MICA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Again, I stayed out here yesterday and today to make this point, because this is critical to the future economic development, the growth of jobs in this country. With that spirit in mind, I appreciate the gentleman's offer to look further at this proposal.
Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
http://thomas.loc.gov