-9999
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RUBIO. I think this is an issue that has been talked about. There is a lot of interest in it and rightfully so.
In China, even as I speak to you now, human beings working as slaves because of their ethnicity and their religion, Uighur Muslims, are in factories making products that people will buy this holiday season and throughout the year.
I think it would be shocking to most Americans. I think it would be shocking to all of us to know that even as I stand here now, there are products in this very Chamber in the Senate that were touched by and made by the hands of slaves. It is a horrifying, horrifying human rights situation--fully sanctioned, as we now know, by the Government of China, the Communist Party of China.
We know this, by the way. The New York Times had access to these documents for a long time--and they were finally revealed--that show that this plan to use slave labor went to the highest levels of that Communist Party.
I think it is also appalling that it reveals the level of dependence this country has and the need we have to rebuild our industrial base in this country and in allied nations. It is appalling because it is a fact that we are so dependent on China in our supply chain, that many have asked us to look the other way, to not complain about this, to not pass a bill about this because it would disrupt supply chains, when what they really mean is it would disrupt the bottom line, their profits.
I don't need to explain to anybody how this works. You can make a lot of money if you don't have to pay your workers or you pay them very little. It allows you to undercut your competition.
So the fact that we have major American corporations and, for that matter, national corporations and multinational corporations that are making money, whose profits are driven by the fact that slaves are building and making the materials they sell to us, is a horrifying reality.
We have worked on this in a bipartisan way for 2 years, and we have, fortunately, now reached a point--and, as you recall, I was here 2 weeks ago objecting to an amendment package on the NDAA to force action. I want to recognize Congressman McGovern, our House counterpart, and, obviously, the junior Senator from Oregon, who is going to speak in a moment here in the Senate. It has been a bipartisan effort.
We passed legislation on this last year. Differences between the House and Senate kept it from becoming law. We passed it unanimously out of the Senate earlier this year, but there were differences between our approaches. And since that time, where the amendment packet was objected to on the Defense bill, the House has passed not one but two versions of this bill.
We are now in possession of one of those two versions, and it is a version that doesn't have any objections here in the Senate either.
I wish we didn't have to pass this bill. There have been some in the hallway who have suggested--I don't know if the right word is congratulations, but commenting on how far we have come. And my argument is that this is nothing to be happy about because, even when we pass this bill, there will still be people working as slaves.
I wish that this did not even exist, but it does, and we must address it. So we are now virtually just a couple of moves away, and it may not happen today, unfortunately, for reasons you are about to learn unrelated to this. But we are a couple of moves away from being able to send this to the White House for the President to sign and for it to become law.
I think it would be a powerful statement to make but also impactful. A bill that says if you make things--if you are a company that makes things or sources material--from these parts of China, you are going to have to prove that slaves didn't make it before you can bring it into this country. And I hope that if we can do that here, that other countries around the world will follow suit.
If I may, Madam President, I wanted to yield to the junior Senator from Oregon, who has worked side by side with us on this and has been a key part of this, to issue his comments on it as well.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 6256, which was received from the House; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RUBIO. Madam President.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RUBIO. Madam President.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RUBIO. It cannot pass unanimously, and even if it could and it did pass, we would have to send it back over to the House, not to the President, and the House isn't even in session until January 10.
That doesn't sound like a good arrangement to me, and it is something that I would have to object to.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source