Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2004

DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004

AMENDMENT NO. 1543

Mr. DORGAN. The amendment offered this morning by Senator Byrd is an amendment dealing with the issue of funding the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. I will talk about the Byrd amendment which provides additional funding for the Title I program, a major part of No Child Left Behind.

The No Child Left Behind law passed the Congress with very wide support. It was proposed by the President. It was embraced by people on the left and the right in Congress. It had strong bipartisan support. But there are significant issues and problems attached to it, one of which is being addressed by this amendment offered this morning by my colleague. I come to the floor to support that amendment.

I begin by saying that I am a little weary of people trashing public schools in this country. We have a wonderful educational system. We have significant challenges. There is no question about that. But we have a great educational system.
We are one of the few countries in the world that early on started with a basic notion that every young child ought to be able to go through a classroom door and learn and become whatever their God given talents allow them to become. Through it all, we have had wonderful young men and women move from classrooms to experiments in research, to business, to academics, and to create in this country quite a remarkable record of achievement.

I recall a story I have told my colleagues many times but it is worth telling again whenever I talk about education. The oldest man in Congress when I arrived was a man named Claude Pepper, the Congressman from the State of Florida. He was then in his late eighties. When I went to see him to say hello, because I knew a lot about him, behind his chair in his office on the wall were two interesting pictures. One was of Orville and Wilbur Wright making the first airplane flight. It was autographed to Congressman Pepper, by Orville Wright before he died, a picture of his first flight: To Congressman Claude Pepper, with great admiration, Orville Wright.

Beneath it there was a picture of Neil Armstrong standing on the Moon, autographed to Claude Pepper. I thought about the distance between those two framed photographs, the first person to fly and the first person to walk on the Moon. December 17, 1903, for 59 seconds, Orville Wright left the ground and flew. And then in 1969 Neil Armstrong walked on the surface of the Moon.

What is the distance between those two photographs framed on one Congressman's office wall? The distance is education, learning, knowledge. It did not happen in a European country. It did not happen in an African or Asian country. It happened in this country.

Our system of public education gives every young child every opportunity to be whatever their God given talents allow them to be, which has spawned remarkable opportunities and challenges and remarkable achievements. Those achievements, the first person to leave the ground and fly and the first person to fly to the Moon and walk on the surface of the Moon is an achievement of technology, science, and knowledge.

There are so many others. We could talk about, for example, Dr. Jonas Salk and the development of the Salk vaccine that prevents polio. There are so many other examples that I should not even begin to list them.

The point is that all of this stems from America's public schools. Yes, we have some great private schools as well, but public education has been the way we have educated the large majority of American young people.

I come from one of those schools, a very small rural school in a very small town with a senior high school class of nine students, a high school with four grades—freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior—totaling 40 students. We didn't have foreign languages in that high school. We had a library the size of a coat closet. Disadvantaged? Probably. But did I get a great education? You bet your life I did. Because the school board members in that town cared about that school and made sure it was a good school.

Let me talk just a bit about where we are today. I talked about where I went to school. We still have a lot of rural schools. I visited many communities in August in my home State of North Dakota and talked with educators, talked with school administrators, talked with parents about the schools in their hometowns. We have many small community schools and they do a remarkable job of educating their kids.

We passed a piece of Federal legislation that the President described as No Child Left Behind. I think it makes sense. I agree with President Bush. It makes sense to have accountability in education. Accountability is important. We spend a lot of money on schools and on education. We give report cards to kids for a reason—so that child and that child's parents understand how the child is doing in school. That is the report card. There is nothing at all wrong or inappropriate with us deciding we ought to have report cards on our schools as well, because some schools do better than others.

The question is why. Why shouldn't a child walking through a classroom door in one State have the same opportunity at a quality education as a child walking through a classroom door in another State or another county or another city?
Accountability is fine. We spend a great deal of money on education in this country. Public funding for education is important. We commit a great deal to it, so let's hold schools accountable. That is the philosophy behind this law, No Child Left Behind. The title itself simply begs the question: Would you want to leave a child behind? The answer is no, of course not. Has anyone proposed legislation here in the Senate that says: Let's leave children behind? Has anybody here said: My bill says leave children behind? Of course not. No Child Left Behind is a title. We all agree with that. It is a slogan, and an important slogan, I might say: No Child Left Behind.

What is important, however, is what we do at the Federal level to create opportunities to improve our education system and, yes, to provide more accountability for how the resources are spent and how our schools are doing. It is very important for us to have passed this legislation and now to do what is necessary to make it work.

I regret to tell you that at least my observation is that in two areas we are setting this law up for failure, which then means we are setting up for failure those children and the teachers and the parents and the school administrators who are a part of this large, wonderful, important industry called public education.

The two areas are as follows. No. 1 is funding. There was an implied promise by everyone when this legislation was passed imposing mandates, certain requirements on school districts and schools in this country, that we would provide the funding for those mandates. In fact, when President Bush signed the law, he said:

And a fourth principle is that we are going to spend more money, more resources, but they'll be directed at methods that work. We're going to spend more on our schools, and we're going to spend it more wisely.

Beyond this quote, the implied promise by the President and by Members of Congress, the bipartisan consensus, was that we will impose these mandates and we will provide funding to make them work. Regrettably, that has not happened. Providing the funding is the goal of this amendment that has been offered and it is one I support. The ink of the President's signature on this bill was hardly dry when the next Presidential budget was sent to the Congress that did not fully fund the authorized requirements in No Child Left Behind. In fact, the President's proposal cut some funding initially. The Fiscal Year 2003 Omnibus Appropriations Act fell about $7.2 billion short of the authorized level for No Child Left Behind programs.

Some will make the case that authorization bills are different from appropriations bills. It is not unusual that we authorize more than we actually appropriate, and I agree with that. That certainly is the case. But it is also the case with No Child Left Behind that we embarked on a new and aggressive education policy in this country that said we will seek accountability but we will also provide the resources to make that happen. Regrettably, the President has not requested those resources. His requests have fallen far short of that which I believe was promised. Also, the Congress has not provided the resources above the President's request. We have provided some additional resources but not sufficient resources to do what I believe we need to be doing.

The second area I think will set this up for failure unless some changes are made is the issue of flexibility. This ought not and cannot and should not be a one-size-fits-all public policy. You simply cannot put the same template over a school with nine high school senior students as you do over a school in midtown Manhattan. They are different schools with different resources, different needs, different circumstances. So you have to have some flexibility to recognize that.

If this law is administered with flexibility and with the sensitivity and understanding that you have different parts of the country with different needs, different school districts, different kinds of schools, different challenges with different kinds of students—if you understand that and are sensitive to it in the rules and regulations administered by both the Department of Education and the State education agencies, then this can work.

But if this policy says to a small school in a small town: You have a teacher and that teacher has been teaching geography in your school for 12 years, and he or she is, by all accounts, a wonderful teacher, loved by the students, teaches a wonderful course in geography, and produces from that course students who know that subject cold—by all accounts an all-star teacher, but that teacher is teaching in his or her college minor, not major if, because of this—legislation and the way it is interpreted in the rules and regulations at the Federal Department of Education and the State education authorities, you say to that teacher and that school: By the way, you are not highly qualified and therefore you are not eligible to teach that course in geography that you have taught so well and with such excellence for 12 years, then I say this legislation is destined to fail.

We must recognize, and the legislation we passed does recognize, that there are alternatives and opportunities for teachers of the type I just described. Some, however, who administer this law, at both the Federal and State levels, say what we demand, then, is that teachers teach only in their major because that is the only teacher who is highly qualified. Nonsense. Total rubbish. There are teachers who teach in their minor who do a wonderful job and have developed the experience, the skill, and the capability to be wonderful teachers.

If someone is going to say, especially to rural schools in this country: You must teach only in your major, and if you are teaching in your minor, you are not highly qualified and therefore you are not eligible to teach, then the question is, Who is going to come up with the extra money to fund all that? You are going to have teachers going through our colleges getting trained as teachers getting double majors? They have to stay in school longer. It is going to cost more money.

We have States that do not pay teachers very much money. The fact is, they spend most of their day with our kids. Yet we do not, apparently, value that profession significantly enough to pay it the kind of money that is necessary to keep teachers in the profession.

I think two things are at work here. First, if this is not funded, it is destined to fail. You cannot have an implied promise that we will impose the mandate and fund the mandate and then not fund it. And, second, if we do not have flexibility in how this is administered by both Federal and State education departments, it is destined to fail as well. I don't want it to fail. I want this law to succeed, and I want this to recognize with some significant abundance of common sense that there is a way to hold schools accountable. There is a way for us to establish national aspirations and goals, to demand accountability, without being foolish about it and without telling a fair number of teachers, wonderful teachers, the best and brightest with standards of excellence by all accounts, that, somehow, you are no longer capable of teaching. That makes no sense at all. That is absurd.

I want this to succeed, but the two areas I mentioned are two areas I think will destine this law to fail unless remedies are taken that will resolve both: No. 1, adequate funding and, No. 2, the implementation of this legislation in a way that recognizes the need for flexibility; the implementation ought to recognize that "highly qualified" is a description that ought to apply to all teachers who do an excellent job everywhere in this country. That is who highly qualified ought to apply to.
All of us come from schools that gave us opportunities. I mentioned that my high school senior class was in a really small community in southwestern North Dakota with nine students. I had a couple of teachers, one especially who I think helped me a great deal. Teachers live with you the rest of their lives. In fact, when I was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, my English teacher from high school would still from time to time send back to me newsletters I would send out to North Dakota constituents. She would edit them for grammar and mistakes and send them back. English teachers never leave you, of course. But there are wonderful teachers. They blessed my life and blessed the lives of so many American kids who have graduated from our school system.

I come today to support the specific Byrd amendment that would provide the funding that is necessary to increase funding for title I to the $18.6 billion level that was authorized by law. Title I is the largest program funded by the No Child Left Behind Act, the major Federal aid program serving disadvantaged students—those students most in danger of falling behind.
This amendment is the same amendment Senator Byrd offered during the appropriations committee markup, which was regrettably rejected on a party-line vote.

We hear these days of teachers buying their own supplies for their classrooms because the school district doesn't supply them. We hear about states on the west coast where teachers worked the last 10 days of the year for free, without salary, because the school district didn't have the money to pay them. We hear all of these stories about what is happening with respect to the financial crunch both at the State and local governments. That applies to school districts as well.

The question of whether we are going to allow this to succeed and make accountability something that really does work is I think a function of whether we are willing to put our money where our mouth is. If we are going to impose mandates, how are we going to fund those mandates? The implied promise was that we were. Regrettably, the history of this in the last couple of years is that we are not going to meet that promise. This amendment is one more opportunity to do what we said we were going to do.

Second, I simply want my comments today to send a statement to those who are engaged both at the Federal level and at the State level in developing these definitions that if these definitions and the implementation of this legislation is done without common sense, once again this is destined to fail. We must have some common sense in how this is implemented. It can work. It should work. I hope it will work. But this law called the No Child Left Behind Act simply will not work unless these two conditions are met.

I introduced a resolution a couple of months ago that would suspend the enforcement of the No Child Left Behind Act until full funding is provided and that called for flexibility in the implementation that will allow this law an opportunity to work.
I see that the Senator from Pennsylvania, the manager of the bill, is on the floor. I was intending to say just a few words on a separate subject on the issue of trade, but I don't want to interrupt the discussions with respect to education. So let me ask my colleague if he was intending to speak on the bill at this point. If that were the case, I would defer.

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Mr. DORGAN. I say, Mr. President, to the Senator from Pennsylvania that I am aware that the Secretary of Education at one point talked about being very ginger with respect to waivers and the kind of flexibility I think is necessary. I do not have his quotes in front of me.

But the point I was trying to make is that as States determine what their specific needs are, of course the State education authority is going to be in touch with the Department of Education to determine how the Department of Education is going to send down the rules, how they are going to enforce this.

My understanding, at least, is that the Department of Education has indicated it is not going to be very anxious or interested in waiver policies. So the point I was trying to make—and I don't think I mentioned one-room schools. I mentioned small schools.

Mr. SPECTER. You can't get any smaller than a one-room school.

Mr. DORGAN. But the point I was trying to make is, if we do not have flexibility and therefore describe wonderful teachers as not highly qualified, and you have to hire additional teachers in small schools so they are all teaching in their major, then the question is: Who is going to come up with the money for that?

First of all, I do not think it would be smart to do that because you are telling some wonderful teachers they are not qualified. But second, if you do embark on that strategy, it is going to cost all of these school districts more money, and that becomes the mandate. And the question is: Who is going to fund the mandate?

Those are the questions I raised that are related to both funding and also flexibility. I hope an abundance of common sense might well be applied to all aspects of this legislation.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, my response is that I agree with the Senator from North Dakota, there has to be flexibility. I am not conversant with what is going on in Kansas rural schools today, but I can become conversant. And perhaps the Senator from North Dakota is conversant on what is going on with rural schools in North Dakota.

But if they still have a small school, where a single teacher is all there is in a one-room school, and they have four students to teach in four different grades, I don't think it is realistic to bring four teachers in with specialties. You might have to have more than four because they teach arithmetic, geography, English, and history, and many subjects.
What I intend to do is to find out what is going on there.

Mr. DORGAN. Might I ask the Senator from Pennsylvania to yield?

Mr. SPECTER. I am glad to yield.

Mr. DORGAN. The point is not just a one-room school or one teacher teaching four kids. The point is, for example, a school of the type I described with four grades and 50 students and four teachers. Those four teachers are having to teach outside of their major. They are teaching in their minor and major, several different classes, and in many cases are wonderful teachers who produce great students. They know their subjects, and the demonstration of being good teachers is that they turn kids out of that classroom having completed their course, and these kids know the subject as well. In those circumstances, a school like that couldn't possibly hire another four teachers because they wouldn't have the money.
The question is, are you still going to continue to keep those schools open and allow those teachers to teach in their major and minor provided they are good teachers?

Unfortunately, I believe we are headed toward a time when the definition of who is highly qualified will exclude many of those great teachers.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, my question to the Senator from North Dakota, precisely stated: Does he know of any situation where there is any such school, where the State head of education has submitted that issue to the U.S. Department of Education for a waiver and had it turned down?

Mr. DORGAN. Well, as the Senator from Pennsylvania notes, we are not down the road far enough at this point to understand exactly what the U.S. Department of Education is going to do in terms of allowing States to deal with their specific needs. I can tell you, having dealt with many Federal agencies for a long time—I know the Senator has as well—having watched some of these statements coming from the Department of Education, we will at some point be on the floor talking about these circumstances because we will have Federal Rules imposed by the Government in a way that simply does not match the needs or interests of the small local school districts.

I will be happy to work with the Senator as we proceed so that if he indicates—and he did earlier—he believes flexibility is the hallmark and a watchword, you have to have flexibility and common sense, then he and I need to be very vigilant in making sure that both the State plans but also especially and most importantly the Federal Rules with respect to how those plans are evaluated give us the opportunity for some common sense and flexibility.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, if we are not far enough down the road to know how it is going to work out, I don't think we are far enough down the road to criticize it. I think we are far enough down the road to make inquiries. But I think it is premature to criticize this bill for lack of flexibility, premature to criticize this bill for lack of funding to accommodate more flexibility until we see that the U.S. Department of Education has denied an application by North Dakota or Kansas or some rural State, which has a good educational system and has it taken care of, that is being turned down on the flexibility request.

The issue has been raised. I think it is an important issue. As the chairman of the subcommittee, I will make inquiries to see how the flexibility rule is being carried out to date or how it is proposed to be carried out, to have hearings, if necessary, in the subcommittee. We ought to anticipate the problem, but it is too soon to criticize.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if the Senator from Pennsylvania will yield once again.

Mr. SPECTER. I do.

Mr. DORGAN. First of all, it is not so much a criticism as a determination of what is necessary to make this legislation or make this new law work. The State plans that were submitted to the Department of Education for approval deal almost exclusively with how states measure yearly progress for the school districts themselves. These plans that have been approved do not deal with the definition of "highly qualified" teachers.

If you take a look at what has been discussed and described, including the discussions around the provisions in the underlying law itself, there is enough to cause concern that ought to require us to talk about it at this point. Because if we don't do that, we will head towards 2005 and 2006, when the deadline exists with respect to the issue of highly qualified teachers, and we will find we have put in place a bureaucratic juggernaut that will cause chaos in school districts all across the country.

It is very important for us to discuss this now.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I agree it is important to discuss. The information handed to me at the staff level represents that since the act was passed in 2001, funding for high quality professional development for teachers and school administrators has been increased by 32 percent during the Clinton administration in the seven years following the Elementary and Secondary Education Act authorized in 1994, which also called for set standards to develop and implement assessments. The total increase provided for title I grants to LEAs was $2.4 billion or 38 percent. In contrast, at the level proposed in this bill, the total increase since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Program in 2001, would be $3.6 billion or 41 percent. So I think the funding in this bill is providing for improvements.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. DORGAN. I don't disagree at all with the data. I did not talk about Clinton versus Bush and so on. I didn't make that reference. The circumstances are dramatically different than they were previously. We embarked on a new, different, aggressive education policy called No Child Left Behind in which we imposed for the first time significant enforceable standards in order to measure accountability. That was my point.

I like the work the Senator from Pennsylvania does. He and I have worked on a lot of things together. Notably, I was one who, along with the Senators from Pennsylvania and Iowa and others, worked to try to double the amount of funding in the National Institutes of Health, and the dividends that will pay for the American people in the future are significant. I like the work the leadership of this subcommittee does, the Senator from Pennsylvania and the Senator from Iowa. I appreciate working with them. He indicated this is the best we can do on funding. He would probably wish to do more. I think I heard him suggest that. I sit back and try to figure out what are our priorities as a country. What are the priorities? Then I see stories.

For example, in the middle of all of this, I was visiting schools and talking about funding that might or might not happen under these mandates. And at that time, we were simultaneously having a situation with Turkey this year. They would not let us use their bases or allow our troops to cross their borders into Iraq. So Mr. Wolfowitz was sent to Turkey and came back with a deal to provide $26 billion to Turkey. I called around to find out where that money was coming from. I found out $6 billion was to be in the form of direct grants and $20 billion in guaranteed loans. I am thinking, maybe I should change my name to Turkey. The old John Paxon song, I am changing my name to Poland.

I think the issue for all of us is what are the priorities? What represents the significant priorities including national security, national defense, homeland security? Those are significant. But when you talk about education, it is also the case that education is our future. I want this law to succeed. I want it to work. The only point I came to talk about is, I don't think it can or will work unless, A, adequate funding exists to pay for the mandates we impose on local school districts and, unless, B, there is a reservoir of common sense used on how these rules apply to schools.

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INTERNATIONAL TRADE

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will be very brief. I know some of my colleagues want to speak as well.
Yesterday was Labor Day. I noticed this morning that there was a speech given by the President, which I welcome, in which he talked about increased attention to international trade issues, particularly trade deficits and the jobs that are flowing overseas. The story specifically talks about the difficulties we have in the manufacturing jobs that have left. I wanted to make a couple of points about that.

I have talked before about the trade deficit. We have the largest trade deficit in human history. It is now over $470 billion. Let me just show a chart that shows this trade deficit, although the red marks on this chart really should read "jobs." When your trade deficit goes to $470 billion, that means jobs that used to exist here exist elsewhere—in China, Japan, South Korea, Europe, Mexico, Canada.

I want to make a point about this because I am heartened by the fact that the President talked about China. The Administration is talking about currency fluctuations, which is a separate issue. I have spoken about that many times.
Having trade agreements with other countries and not having a shock absorber to adjust for currency fluctuations makes no sense at all. It never has. We negotiate with Mexico for a trade agreement and you ratchet down 10 and 15 percent tariffs to 5 percent and 2 percent. And then Mexico devalues its currency by 50 percent. You are 35 percent worse off.

It has never made any sense to deal with trade agreements on tariffs and not worry about currency fluctuations. That is what we are finding with China. China is manipulating its currency values in a way that continues the trade deficit with China which is now $103 billion a year. They send us all their trinkets and trousers, tennis shoes, you name it. They produce it and send it here to go on our store shelves in Laramie, WY, Fargo, ND, Denver, CO for our consumers. Guess what. Try to send the Chinese some North Dakota wheat and see what you find out. The trade isn't two way. We don't really have a two-way trade agreement with China and Japan. We don't have an adequate trade agreement with Mexico, Canada, Korea, and Europe.

The Senate will soon consider a Commerce-State-Justice bill, which funds the Department of Commerce. The Department of Commerce is a crucial agency when it comes to international trade, because it has a Market Access Compliance program responsible for knocking down foreign trade barriers.

Do you know how many people the MAC program has to deal with trade barriers in China? Just 19. And we have a $103 billion deficit with China.

Now, the Commerce Department is involved in the issue of knocking down trade barriers in other countries. We have a $70 billion trade deficit with Japan. Do you know how many people at the MAC program deal with Japan? Ten people.

We have a $13 billion deficit with Korea and we have two-and three-quarters people working on market access issues in Korea. I don't know how three-quarters of a person works on this; there must be a new, novel way to do that in Commerce.

We have an $82 billion trade deficit with Europe and just 15 people working to open up those European markets and enforce trade agreements with Europe.

This makes no sense at all because this relates to jobs. When I asked on Labor Day what happened to manufacturing jobs, I will tell you what happened. They have gone. Paul Craig Roberts, an economist in the Reagan administration, wrote an op-ed piece recently saying that this is not a jobless economic recovery. Yes, the country is beginning to show economic growth. No, we don't have additional jobs. We have lost several million jobs. Jobs are not being created in this country; they are being created elsewhere. That is the problem. Part of it, in my judgment, is simply enforcement, demanding that other countries own up to their responsibilities to us in our trade agreements.

I have used this example often—and I will again briefly—with respect to Korea because it is such an appropriate example.
Do you know that last year we imported from Korea very close to 680,000 vehicles into this country; 680,000 Korean cars came into the United States. Does anyone know how many American automobiles we were able to export to Korea? Just 2,800. So it was 680,000 to 2,800. Why? Because our markets are open to their cars. Good for us. Their market is largely closed to our automobiles. We don't do much about it. We just do not do much about it. Don't we care? I don't know. Nobody cares much, it seems to me, to begin to say to the South Koreans, with respect to automobile trade: If you want to sell cars in the U.S., open your markets wide to American vehicles. If you don't, then go sell your cars in Zambia, or in Libya, but not in our marketplace, until your marketplace is open to us.

While I am on the subject of cars, in the last trade agreement we did with China—a country with a $103 billion surplus with us—our negotiators agreed, for reasons I would never understand, that with respect to future trade between the United States and China in vehicles, automobiles, we would agree, after a long phase-in, that we will have a 2.5-percent tariff on any Chinese automobiles that would eventually be sold in our country, and China would be allowed to have a 25-percent tariff on any U.S. automobile sold in China.

So our negotiators sat down with a country that has a very large trade surplus with us, and said we will agree, after a phase-in, for you to have a tariff that is 10 times higher in China on U.S. automobiles going to China than we would have on Chinese automobiles coming into the United States. I don't understand how people think when they do that. They undercut our marketplace and throw away our jobs.

Look, I am for expanding trade. I think expanded trade is good but it must be fair trade. If it is not fair and in our mutual best interests in bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, then we need to rethink it.

We face a circumstance in this country when we talk about the need for additional jobs. What happened to the 3 million jobs that used to exist here that no longer exist here? They exist elsewhere, where they can hire children at age 12 and put them in a manufacturing plant that doesn't have to be a safe workplace because you don't have OSHA; they can dump chemicals into the air and water because that country doesn't have an EPA, and it can pay 12-year-old children 20 cents an hour and work them 14 hours a day, and it is perfectly legal—by the way, a manufacturing plant that can prevent them, because their country prevents them, from organizing as a labor force.

That is where the jobs are going. Too many are going in that direction, and too many American families who used to have decent jobs with decent pay and benefits now have to look at those jobs existing in other countries that didn't fight for the last century for the kinds of things that we did, such as safe workplaces, child labor laws, fair compensation, and a requirement that you not pollute streams and the air.

Our country is losing ground, not gaining ground. If you look at the ocean of red ink on this chart in international trade, and at the loss of jobs, and if you look at what this translates into with respect to the weakening of our basic core manufacturing in this country, you simply must be concerned.

I don't want to sound like someone who is a "classic protectionist" who doesn't believe in trade; I believe in trade. I believe in the doctrine of comparative advantage, when a country can produce something in a manner that is much more efficient than ours because of the resources they have, because of natural advantages they have, then it makes more sense for us to buy from them and sell to them that which is in our best comparative advantage. But it is not part of the doctrine of comparative advantage to have a country that says we are going to hire kids and pay them pennies and dump sewage in the streams and the air. That is not a doctrine of comparative advantage; that is a political imposition that creates circumstances by which we lose manufacturing jobs to other areas of the world and then have them produce the products and ship them back into our marketplace. We have the products, perhaps at a lower price, and what we also have is an economy that is losing jobs and steam. That is why we have to be concerned about this.

I welcome the President's statement yesterday that he is going to have someone in the Administration dealing with this issue of China and dealing with the issue of the currency fluctuations. But there are far greater problems in international trade than just currency fluctuations. That is one of them but it is by no means the most significant.

I will not spend more time going on and on about the specifics of potato flakes to Korea at a 300-percent tariff. I can spend time talking about these continuing trade barriers, such as beef to Japan, where 15 years after the beef agreement with Japan every single pound of American beef is set to have a 50-percent tariff on it. Fifteen years after our agreement with Japan—a country with a $70 billion surplus with us—for us to allow that to happen is shameful. I will not go further, except to say I will speak at greater length on trade and jobs, which are related in a significant way, because we must—Republicans, Democrats, the administration, and Congress—tackle this issue in a significant way if we are going to preserve a strong, vibrant manufacturing base in this country and begin building jobs—good jobs that pay well with decent benefits once again.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, will my friend yield?

Mr. DORGAN. I will be happy to yield.

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Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Nevada that the most recent free trade agreement we voted on in the Senate was the Singapore Free Trade Agreement. It is an example of everything that is wrong with our trade policy.

The Singapore Free Trade Agreement was negotiated in secret, as are all trade agreements, and then they are unveiled with great fanfare, and we are told: Here is the agreement. And because the Congress decided it would vote itself a set of handcuffs so that when a trade agreement comes to the floor of the Senate we cannot offer any amendments—that is called fast track—when the Singapore Free Trade Agreement came to the Senate, it had a provision in it that had nothing to do with the Singapore Free Trade Agreement—nothing at all. It had to do with immigration, and it said we will grant special visas to 5,400 people from Singapore to come into this country to take American jobs. All of the folks on the committee who deal with immigration were apoplectic. They had apoplectic seizures on the floor of the Senate. What did we do? We constructed a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that said to the Administration: Next time, you better watch it. What a wonderful piece of public policy. Why couldn't anybody offer an amendment to take out the 5,400 jobs that will be taken in this country by the special visas given in that bill? Because we cannot offer any amendments to the trade bill. And so they negotiated this Singapore Free Trade Agreement. It has other problems with it, I should say, but they negotiated it with this little provision, and we could not take it out. That is so symbolic of what is wrong with our trade policies.

The minute you speak of this, as is always the case, the Washington Post, for example, which simply will not allow an op-ed piece on my side of the issue—you almost never see an op-ed piece talking about the requirement for fair trade because the Washington Post and most of the largest newspapers have the same view and that is: Free trade, free trade. It is like a mantra. We ought to put them in robes on a street corner and let them chant for a while, to get it out of their system, "free trade, free trade." The only thing that matters, it seems to me, is whether trade is fair and whether the engagement we have with other countries is mutually beneficial.

After the Second World War, our trade policy was exclusively foreign policy for 25 years because we wanted to help other countries. So we did all kinds of concessional trade strategies with other countries that were fine. It was our foreign policy.
It was a way for us to help them, and it did not matter because we could beat any country under any set of circumstances in the job market with one hand tied behind our back. We knew that. We were the biggest, the best, and the strongest. We had an economy that could compete with anybody with one hand tied behind our back. So for 25 years, our trade policy was exclusively foreign policy run out of the State Department.

Twenty-five years after the Second World War, we began to see the emergence of some pretty tough, strong international competition—Japan, Europe, others, now China. Our trade policy is still, in most cases, soft-headed foreign policy. Instead of saying, Let us make sure that as a strong economic power, the world's preeminent economic superpower, that we retain a basic core manufacturing base—because we will not long remain an economic superpower without a manufacturing base—instead of saying that, what we are saying as a country in our policies is we do not care what remains. If we have a complete decimation of the manufacturing base in this country, so be it, that is the way the world economy was intending it to be. That is so shallow and so fundamentally devoid of caring about this country's national security. Yet, I am telling you, there are people out there who believe that. They just say: Let's have whatever happens happen and no complaining.

What bothers me the most about this situation, when we talk about these jobs, is we have set up the American workers to compete in a way that is fundamentally unfair because our country will not stand with its workers. We say to our workers: If you do not want to lose your job, then you better be prepared to compete. What does that mean? If you do not want to lose your job, you better take a pay cut. If you do not want to lose your job, you better be prepared not to get any benefits in the future. If you do not want to lose your job, be prepared to compete with that 12-year-old kid making 12 cents a day working 12 hours a day in an unsafe factory.

When did that become the admission price of the American marketplace, the only marketplace of its type in the world, the most lucrative marketplace in the world? When did we decide the admission price is do anything under any circumstances and allow your goods to come onto our shelves? When did that become something we accepted as a matter of course?

What about a sense of fairness in which this country says our workers will compete? The American workers are the finest in the world. We will compete anytime anywhere with anybody under any circumstances provided we understand that which we fought for a century in this country represents a value system by which we measure jobs. One ought to be able to have the right to organize as workers. One ought to be able to have the right to work in a safe workplace. One ought not to have to compete with 8-, 10-, and 12-year-old kids because they ought to have child labor laws. One ought to have some fair compensation capability. We fought for those issues for years. In fact, there are people who died on the streets in this country fighting for the right to organize.

I thought we had gotten through all those issues and said, Here is what the American marketplace is about, but now there are executives of companies who say: Let's fly around in our jet and look at various places in the world where we might produce, where we pole vault over those questions. We do not have to answer questions about hiring kids. We do not have to answer questions about paying 12 or 20 cents an hour. We do not have to answer to an OSHA or EPA. We, in fact, are going to move our production to Bangladesh or Sri Lanka.

Here is the result: A little story I read recently about producers in a manufacturing plant far away from here, in a portion of Asia, making baseball caps. Those baseball caps have 1½-cent labor in each baseball cap, and they are sent to the bookstore of an Ivy League college to be sold for $17. One-and-a-half-cent labor by a young Asian worker in a plant far away to produce a baseball cap that is then sold for $17 in the bookstore of an Ivy League college. I suppose that used to be a job in this country, to make baseball caps. It used to be we made shoes, shirts, and trousers, too.

One day when I was speaking in the Senate Chamber, Fruit of the Loom decided it was gone. Fruit of the Loom made a big announcement that they were moving to Mexico. I said: It is one thing to lose your shirt, but I mean Fruit of the Loom, once they leave .    .    . Just think of the jobs that used to exist here, that supported families, are going elsewhere.

I could understand that if it represented the doctrine of comparative advantage where one country had a specific resource or some specific advantage in which they produce something in a much more attractive and a much less expensive way than we do, provided that advantage is not some politically imposed advantage by a government that says you cannot organize, you do not have to have a safe workplace, you can pay pennies, and you can hire kids.

That is not part of the comparative advantage. That is a political will and a political system that says let's take jobs from those industrialized countries that have already settled those issues.

I hope to speak on trade at greater length later this week. It was my intention to mention the effort that was discussed yesterday in the newspapers about China and specifically about trade and jobs. I think this is a critically important issue. A recovery without jobs is not the kind of recovery we need in this country. We need a recovery that produces decent jobs that pay well, that have good benefits. We specifically need to pay attention to and understand that a world economic superpower will only remain a world economic superpower if they have a strong manufacturing base. That is critical to any economy.

I yield the floor.