Domicivan Repbulic-Central Americ-United States Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act--Continued

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC-CENTRAL AMERICA-UNITED STATES FREE TRADE AGREEMENT IMPLEMENTATION ACT--Continued

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, this has been a long debate, and generally, in most respects, the statements have been a little bit one-sided: CAFTA is great, it is going to help; or CAFTA is a terrible idea; it will send us down the drain. I am hopeful because I sensed that in the last 2 to 3 hours, the statements have been a little more toward the center, trying to figure out realistically what is happening, what is going on here.

I think it is true, we all know in this competitive world that trade is important, it is essential. Companies have to trade, people have to trade both ways. If we do not, we are going to lose out big time. That is clear. There is not much doubt about that. But it is also true--and this has not been sufficiently addressed, certainly not in this debate and certainly not in the country, is
how we address the dislocations that happen on account of trade because so many people lose jobs through no fault of their own.

They work at a company, they work at a plant, say a manufacturing job at a plant, and the company seeking lower wages or lower health care costs goes overseas, maybe seeking software development, R&D investment, and an American loses his job. This might be a 20-year-old, it might be a 50-year-old, who loses his or her job. It is not the fault of the employee. It is because of the system. It is because the world is changing so dramatically. We have not begun at all to address what we should do about that.

We do have trade adjustment assistance. Trade adjustment assistance today applies only to persons who lose manufacturing jobs. It does help people who lose manufacturing jobs get some assistance, get some training, get some health care benefits, but it ought to be easier to get, and it ought to cover more workers, including service workers.

What we care about is training people, finding ways for them to get jobs that make a difference, to help them feel good about themselves without big dislocations in their families.

I might say we also are not addressing the larger trend that is coming. We have lost, say, 3 million manufacturing jobs in America over 2, 3, or 4 years. They are gone. We have also picked up a good number of jobs. But what is the area in which we have picked up a lot of jobs? Lately, in the last couple of years, it is because of 9/11. It is homeland security jobs. It is national defense jobs.

Clearly we need those jobs. But it makes one wonder a little bit, first, if there were no 9/11, sounds like there would be a huge net loss of jobs. We would not have the homeland security jobs we now have.

To make matters more, if not alarming, at least serious, is that although we have lost about 3 million manufacturing jobs, we picked up maybe roughly the same in the homeland security jobs, the next wave is going to be much greater and it is going to make the loss of manufacturing jobs pale in comparison. Our economy is creating and destroying jobs at a faster and faster rate. The total number of jobs may not be decreasing, but the rate of churn in the economy is getting faster and faster, especially with service jobs. This country is not ready for that. We have no paradigm, no structure, to deal with it. The days when you could work single job for 30 years without updating your skills are over. We need to be more prepared, have more educated workers, and more adjustment assistance.

Knowledge is not perfect. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. A book that I started to read is a good book that most Americans should read, called ``The World Is Flat,'' by Thomas Friedman. If one reads that, they get a sense of how much technology, communications technologies, moves things from bottom up instead of top down. In the economic world, nothing is sacred anymore. It is such a free-for-all. It is the wild west in a certain sense. I do not think we are ready for that.

So this debate has been helpful. It helps bring out some of the provisions of CAFTA, what it does and does not do, but it does not address the fundamentals. It does not address the basic problems we should be addressing. I am quite hopeful that sooner rather than later we are going to begin to address and we are going to hear Senators give speeches on what needs to be done. After that, there will be some proposals and debates on those and I am very hopeful that will happen sooner rather than later.

With respect to the more narrow issue of CAFTA, it is my belief, frankly, that regrettably the administration did not work with Congress as much as it should have. If it started earlier, we could very well have had a big vote for CAFTA, especially with respect to sugar. The administration came to Senators with the sugar concerns, beet sugar, cane sugar, very late in the game. In fact, there are negotiations going on right now. It is only because they realized they do not have the votes, especially in the House, at least not yet. The same is true with the labor provisions, no real negotiations, no real discussion there. That is unfortunate because we are one of the two bodies trying to find ways to get trade agreements.

I must say, however, that is not true about environmental issues. About a year or so ago, I realized that on CAFTA, environmental issues were going to be a big problem so I asked Ambassador Zoellick if he could come over to my office and talk about it, and he did. I must say I appreciate the way Ambassador Zoellick, over a period of about a year, dealt with the environmental issues so that would be much less of an issue in this agreement.

There has been a lot of talk about trade fatigue. Maybe the people of our country, Members of Congress, are beginning to wonder, gee, do these agreements mean much. I think that is an appropriate question. There is trade fatigue. One is because we are not enforcing our current trade agreements as we should. If we were to start to enforce our trade agreements, I think Americans would start to think, hey, maybe our Government is doing something to help us out.

My final two points are this: We speak about job loss and we speak about job gain. More importantly, there is a lot of talk about the economy is doing better. It masks the real problems that are going on, and that is the tyranny of averages. Average numbers do not mean much of anything. Why? Because we are such a disparate country. Some people have certain kinds of jobs. Some people have a lot of income, some people do not. That is not the question, what is the average GDP in the economy and all of that.

It helps a little bit, but we are representing people. There are employees. They are the people who work and an awful lot of people are getting hurt these days. A lot of people are doing very well. Bigger companies do very well, but a lot of people are not doing well, and a lot of people who work for big companies are not doing well.

I urge us to remember who we work for. We work for the people. They are the ones who elect or unelect us. I urge us to remember that point.

Finally, I will end where I began, namely, I am quite hopeful. I sense in this agreement, this debate, that people are starting to realize what the real issues are and beginning to realize that maybe the administration could have done a better job in talking to the Congress about the provisions that are in this agreement so that the Congress and the administration can work these out in subsequent trade agreements so we do not have quite the same problems we have tonight. At least I hope so. I am hopeful that will happen.

I yield the remainder of my time.

http://thomas.loc.gov/