Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Thank you, Mr. President.

First, I would like to make a comment on the Republican leader's comments on the tax bill. Just make note, American people, the leader says: Do not raise taxes. But he does not mention what our proposal actually does. It imposes a 5.6-percent surcharge only on those whose incomes are above $1 million. In other words, 99 percent-plus of the American people will not have their taxes raised, nor should they.

Average middle-class people are struggling. Their incomes are declining. We should not be doing that. But for those who are the very wealthiest--and this is no aspersion to them. I think most of us on both sides of the aisle admire people who have made a lot of money. Most Americans would like to be in their shoes, and most of them have done it the hard way: by coming up with a good idea, struggling and working a business. That is great. But they are the one segment in society whose income has actually increased significantly over the last decade.

The one consensus we have in this place is that we have to reduce the deficit and reduce the budget. The one consensus we have is that we have to do that. Well, you are asking middle-class people to chip in by making it harder to pay for college because student loans are not as good or cutting back on somebody who has been unemployed. They worked their whole life, lost their job, and now are unemployed.

So how do we have the top 1 percent--the one part of society doing the best--chip in? Well, the only way is through the Tax Code because they do not need help getting their kids to college. They do not need health care help. God bless them. They have enough money to do that on their own. So this is the only way to do it. If you say no taxes on anybody, even the millionaires--which is what, I assume, the Republican leader is saying--you are saying the best off in society, who have done the best in the last decade, should not contribute to this deficit reduction we have to do.

I believe--and I will say this again and again--the only way we are going to get real deficit reduction is by raising revenues as well as cutting spending. The only real way we are going to break through on raising revenues is making sure those at the highest income contribute and contribute more than others when it comes to the tax system.

I would like to go to the bill at hand, which is S. 1619, the currency act. I know my colleagues have heard me on this all week. It is passionate for me. It is passionate not as a Democrat or not against Republicans. In fact, we have religiously tried throughout--Senator Lindsey Graham and I, throughout the history of this bill, which is a long one, and the bills before it, their predecessors--we have tried to keep this religiously bipartisan.

In fact, we have five lead Democratic sponsors and five lead Republican sponsors. Lindsey and I have opposed Presidents on this issue--whether it was the Republican President Bush or the Democrat President Obama--with equal vigor because we think administrations get too caught up in that highfalutin diplomatic world to understand what American companies, particularly middle-sized companies, go through when China does not play fair.

I am on the Senate floor on this bill many times, more often than I usually speak, because I believe passionately this is about the future of America. If we continue to lose wealth and jobs to China because they manipulate trade laws and intellectual property laws and all kinds of other economic laws for their own advantage, unfairly--against the WTO rules, against the rules of free trade--we may never recover as a country.

This is serious. This is not to gain political advantage, although most Americans agree with it, of course. But I would do this if most Americans did not, and if editorialists did not, business leaders of multinational corporations did not. I do this because when we have small companies that are growing that have great products, and China unfairly competes with them--not because China's products are better but because China's trade allows it to undercut them in our market and in the Chinese market--we are giving away our seed corn.

Take solar cells. China usually uses a one-two punch to hurt us unfairly. First, they will use some trade law to get that business in their country, whether it is rare earths, and they will say: You want these rare earths? You have to manufacture in China. Whether it is intellectual property, they just take it regardless of patent laws and other laws. Or in the case of solar cells, whether it is unfair direct subsidies to companies, they say: You make the solar cells here--the Chinese companies--you will get deep subsidies.

But that alone would not be enough to put our American companies on their butts. What happens is, after they unfairly take the business and move them there, they send them here at a 30-percent discount using currency manipulation. Our American companies--and I have spoken to company after company in manufacturing businesses, in service businesses, and things in between--say: I can't compete. My product is usually better, but not against a 30-percent currency disadvantage. So the price of the Chinese good is 30 percent cheaper.

There is a window manufacturer I just visited, I think it was last Friday. He makes high-end windows for these buildings in New York and elsewhere. The window he makes is better than the Chinese window. This was not a theft of intellectual property. He would not use the Chinese windows because he is a contractor as well. He makes the windows, and then he installs them.

He said: I wouldn't use the Chinese product, but because it has a 30-percent advantage in currency, it undercuts me in price and lots of other people use it.

Now, who would have thought that we are talking about windows? The Chinese are competing against us everywhere. High end, middle end, and low end. On the low end, frankly, we will never get the businesses back. Toys or clothing or shoes, maybe even furniture--except high-end furniture--is not coming back.

The argument that some of these editorialists use, well, they are going to go to Bangladesh or somewhere else if China has to raise its currency is true, but that is not what we are fighting for here. We are fighting for high- and middle-end companies that have great products--solar panels, in which America has a future; jobs that if China played fairly we would win because we make a better product, and it does not have to be exported. Yet we somehow sit here and twiddle our thumbs.

What I was saying about the window guy is, not only now does China compete in manufacturing the windows, Chinese companies come here and install them. Again, it is still a 30-percent advantage because they are paying the Chinese company and workers the yuan, which is undervalued by 30 percent over there.

So this is serious. It is about the future of America, about the future of American jobs. We are all concerned about jobs. There are very few jobs bills that are, A, bipartisan, and, B, do not cost money. This is one of them. It has been a bipartisan bill all the way. The votes showed it.

I see my colleague from Alabama who has been a great partner. I saw my colleague from South Carolina who has been a great partner. How else in this deadlocked, gridlocked situation can we help American workers in a bipartisan way--that does not cost money--in a big way? This is it. There are not many others.

So I would ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--Leader Reid said on the Senate floor a few minutes ago what he said last night, that he would certainly entertain amendments and come to an agreement--amendments from both sides of the aisle, relevant, germane amendments, relevant to trade. I am sure if we could move on cloture, Senator Hatch's amendment--he is the ranking member of the Finance Committee--which deals with trade would be debated. We would try to have time limits. There would be a fair and open debate on an important issue, and then we could vote on the bill.

So I hope we will get a positive vote on cloture this morning, and I hope we will--not for political gain or anything like that but for American gain. We cannot, cannot, cannot continue to let China flaunt the rules.

Ten years ago or eight years ago, when Senator Graham and I started on this issue, China was a much smaller economy. Now they are huge, the second largest in the world. They compete against us up and down the line. They have found six ways from Sunday to lure businesses there. That deals with the Chinese market. But then, with trade currency, when the businesses go there, with currency manipulation they are able to undercut us and send the goods here.

Again, to me--and I am just one person and, obviously, I feel this issue more passionately than 99 percent of Americans because I have been involved in it so long--if we could do five things to restore American jobs and restore American wealth, this would be one of them. This would be one of them.

I want to see our children and grandchildren know that they are going to have better lives than their parents and grandparents, and it is a difficult and tough world to ensure that with global competition, with so many changes.

We were just talking in the gym about how our kids spend so much time on video games all day long instead of learning in school.

There are so many challenges we face as a country. At this time we cannot shrug our shoulders and be benign like maybe 20 or 25 years ago when we were in a different situation, saying: China cheats; so what. Let's not risk any change. Let's not get them mad.

We cannot afford that anymore. The future of America is at stake. To those who say it will cause a trade war, we are in a trade war. We have our clocks cleaned every day and lose jobs every day because of unfair Chinese practices. To those who say China will retaliate, China has got far more to lose in this than we do. They the are ones who benefit from all of these rules, we do not--all of these manipulations. They will not retaliate. Yes, they may do a little thing here and there, but they will not retaliate big time because it will do even more damage to the Chinese economy.

What they will do--Senator Graham and I have seen this, and Senator Sessions and Senator Brown--when they are faced with the hard reality that they will no longer be allowed by legislation or, I wish, by administration action, but that has not been forthcoming from either President Bush or President Obama, they then adjust and play fairer. That is what has happened every single time, and that will happen again.

I want to first compliment my colleagues on this legislation. I want to hope and pray--I pray in this one, me, for the future of America. And the future of America is linked to free and fair trade with China. The future of America is linked to the fact that we can no longer let China unfairly take advantage of American workers, American wealth, and the American future.

I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

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Mr. SCHUMER. All four of us have spoken. Again, I make a plea to my colleagues. We have had 8 months talking about debt, and many have said that is the future for our children and grandchildren. I think there is a consensus on both sides that is true. I argue that this is also about the future for our children and grandchildren, because if good American companies with great ideas are wiped out in the next 10 years--as they will be if China continues its predatory practices--the future for our children and grandchildren in this country will not be bright. Our seed corn, our family jewels are being decimated by a plague of unfair competition that has been allowed to continue. It is as if we have a plague and some of the leaders of this country, whether political or economic, shrug their shoulders and say: That is that. We cannot do that much about this.

In a bipartisan way, we have said we can do something about this plague. We are at the moment of decision. It is my belief that if we pass this in a bipartisan way--as we have to; it is the way the Senate works--the House may not take up our bill exactly, but they will do something. We will have a conference committee, and we can get something done. The odds are quite high that when China sees the train heading down the track, when their ability--I have seen the articles--and I wanted to read some of them into the record--of China urging American companies with plants in China to lobby against this bill. But when China sees the train heading down the track and that, for the first time, their efforts with their multinational allies to stall this bill will not succeed, they will adjust and correct themselves, not just on currency but on all the other areas where they don't treat us fairly.

So this is an important vote and an important day for America.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. SCHUMER. But it was not widely known on this side. The majority leader had offered amendments on this bill. The question I ask is this--and I will make a statement and lead up to a question. You are frustrated because you feel the tree is filled all the time and you cannot make amendments. But we are frustrated because the 60-vote rule--which has always been used here--is now used routinely, which never has been done before. Judges--district court judges--I have been here in the Senate 13 years, and I was in the House 18 years and followed the Senate and cared about judges. It never happened before. Routine appointees--assistant secretaries of this, deputy secretaries of that--60 votes. And on bill after bill after bill, the procedure of this place works that somebody has to object. That is why you file cloture; otherwise, we could proceed.

In the past, the motion to proceed was not routinely blocked. And almost every single bill--important bills, obviously--and nobody thinks the health care bill should have passed by 51 votes. But on minor bills--we had a filibuster on technical corrections to the Transportation bill, where 287 was written down by mistake instead of 387. It was filibustered--60 votes. So our defense is to fill the tree.

But what we ought to try to do here--and, as I said, the Senator from Tennessee and I futilely tried earlier this year to maybe calm things down--is to maybe use this flashpoint to try to come together and work that out again. Maybe the minority would not routinely filibuster everything--appointments, judges, minor bills--and can save it for the major bills. In return--and I agree with the minority leader that the deal around this place is the majority sets the agenda and the minority gets to offer amendments. That has been the rule since I got here and one of the reasons--he is correct, I say to my friend from Kentucky--why I left the House to run for the Senate.

But it has gotten to the extreme. While my colleagues on the other side would say it got to the extreme because we always fill the tree, we would say it got to the extreme because you filibuster everything and require 60 votes on everything--we only have 53, we know that--including judges, appointments, and minor bills. If we are going to bring this place back to order, if we are going to bring this place back to a place where we can legislate, both sides have to back off, and we are going to have to figure out how to do that, which we haven't done adequately yet.

One other point before I ask my question. The Senator from West Virginia had a few of us on his boat this week. A number of the freshmen Senators from the other side of the aisle were on the boat, as I was. We began to talk, and they were asking, why is this place so mixed up? I explained that some of the greatest joys I have had in the Senate and the House were conference committees, and offering amendments, and things such as that. We all said, together, why can't we get back to that?

Let me say that it is not simply filling the tree and preventing amendments that caused this problem. It is routinely requiring 60 votes before the Senate can get a drink of water.

My question to the majority leader is this: Would he be willing--we need a little bit of a cooling-off period--to sit down with the minority leader and others in an effort to try to figure out how we can get back to somewhat more of a regular order in regard to what I said?

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