Departments of Commerce and Justice and Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008 -- Continued

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE AND JUSTICE AND SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008--Continued -- (Senate - October 04, 2007)

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Mr. SANDERS. Let me congratulate Senator Murray, Senator Boxer, and Senator Isakson for their very important work on this asbestos issue.

What I wish to focus on is a front-page story that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The headline reads: ``Republicans Grow Skeptical on Free Trade.'' What it says is:

The new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll posed two statements to voters. The first was, ``Foreign trade has been good for the U.S. economy because demand for U.S. products abroad has resulted in economic growth and jobs for Americans here at home and provided more choices for consumers.''

The second statement was, ``Foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy because imports from abroad have reduced demand for American-made goods, cost jobs here at home, and produced potentially unsafe products.''

Asked which statement came closer to their own view, 59 percent of Republicans named the second statement, while 32 percent pointed to the first.

Back to the headline, ``Republicans Grow Skeptical On Free Trade.'' That is the Republicans.

In terms of the Democrats, earlier in the article:

Other leading Democrats have been harshly critical of trade expansion, pleasing their party's labor union backers. In a March 2007 WSJ/NBC poll, before recent scandals involving tainted imports, 54 percent of Democratic voters said free-trade agreements have hurt the U.S., compared with 21 percent who said they have helped.

So what do we have? We have the overwhelming percentage of Republicans who are now telling us that unfettered free trade is not working for American workers.

We have the overwhelming percentage of Democratic supporters telling us free trade has not been working for the American people. Yet despite those numbers, and a growing consensus among working families in this country, what we continue to see is people in the White House, people in the Senate and the House who keep telling us how great free trade is.

Well, let me be very clear. Free trade is very good for the large multinational corporations who can throw American workers out on the street, move abroad to China and other low-wage countries, hire people there for pennies an hour, and bring their products back into this country. For those people, we concede--for the CEOs of large corporations--unfettered free trade has been a very good thing. But for the middle-class and working families of this country, for working families and poor people in Mexico and in other low-wage countries, unfettered free trade has been an unmitigated disaster.

Now, there are a lot of reasons the middle class in America is shrinking. There are a lot of reasons nearly 5 million Americans have slipped into poverty since George Bush has become President. There are a number of reasons. Certainly, one of the processes by which we as a Nation are engaged in a race to the bottom has been the unfettered free-trade agreements negotiated by the President of the United States and passed by the Congress. And by that I mean NAFTA. I mean permanent normal trade relations with China.

The reality of those trade agreements, plus other economic decisions being made by the U.S. Government, is not just that poverty is increasing, it is that median income for working-age families has declined by about $2,400 since the year 2000. It is that personal savings rates in this country are below zero, and have been below zero for eight consecutive quarters--something that has not happened since the Great Depression.

Unfettered free trade has a lot to do with the fact that over 8 million Americans have lost their health insurance since 2000, and we are now up to 47 million Americans without any health insurance.

Hunger in America is growing. The cost of college education is becoming harder and harder for middle-class families to afford. It is interesting to note that a few months ago, in a poll done by, again, the Wall Street Journal, more than two-thirds of the American people believe the U.S. economy is either in a recession now or will be in a recession next year. That is a poll from August done by Wall Street Journal/NBC News.

In my view, it is imperative that our country trade. Nobody I know of believes we should place a wall around this country. Trade is a good thing. But what we must begin doing is negotiating fair trade agreements that reflect the interests of working families in America, working families in other countries, and not just large multinational corporations and the CEOs who help write these trade agreements.

I just returned the weekend before last from a trip to Costa Rica, where I witnessed something that was really quite extraordinary. Costa Rica will be the first country in the entire world to actually have a referendum to vote up or down whether they want to enter these CAFTA agreements. I have no idea who is going to win that referendum. It looks as if it is going to be very close.

But on one side you have all of the moneyed interests. What I heard is, the ``yeses,'' the people who want that free-trade agreement, CAFTA, are spending 100 times more than the people who are in opposition. You have a media which is almost universally supportive in Costa Rica of this CAFTA agreement.

On the other side you have students, you have environmentalists, you have trade unionists, you have environmentalists, you have an extraordinary grassroots movement such that in a nation of fewer than 4 million people, a week ago, 150,000 people came out in a rally--150,000 in a nation of less than 4 million people--to express their opposition to the CAFTA agreement.

We have--especially with the fact that fast track is no longer in existence--the opportunity as a Congress to begin rethinking our trade policies, to create trade policies which create good jobs in the United States and good jobs in the countries of our trading partners, policies which benefit all of the people and not just the people on top.

So I conclude by saying, if some of my Republican friends think it is just progressives or people who are concerned about the needs of working people on this side who are concerned about trade, I suggest you go to the Wall Street Journal today, and what you will find is the vast majority of Republicans now have serious concerns about our current trade policies because they see those trade policies as being harmful to the middle class and working families of this country.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the poll from the Wall Street Journal be printed in its entirety.

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