Section 101. Express Loans

Section 101. Express Loans -- (Senate - November 20, 2004)

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, today the House and Senate are considering whether to approve the conference report to H.R. 4818. H.R. 4818 is what is commonly called in the Congress an omnibus appropriations bill. Basically, an omnibus bill rolls a number of other bills into a single legislative vehicle for an up-or-down vote on the final package. It is a method frequently used by the Appropriations Committee at the end of the legislative session after the committee has failed to complete its work in regular order. It enables the Appropriations Committee to appropriate funds at the end of the year. Without this appropriation, the Government would shut down. So, it is must pass legislation.

Work on this bill was completed last night around midnight. Since that time, my Finance Committee staff has been scouring the package to determine whether there are any provisions within the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee in the bill. Unfortunately, the Appropriations Committee often includes authorizing language on matters within the jurisdiction of my committee, but fails to notify us. The result is usually poorly drafted and short-sighted provisions, many of which have unintended effects. Unfortunately, this year is no different.

Let's just take one area-international trade. A few years ago, the Appropriations Committee included an amendment which required that monies collected as countervailing duties and antidumping duties be distributed to the petitioners who filed the underlying cases. Many of our trading partners thought this provision violated our international obligations because it enables petitioning industries to not only have duties placed against competing imports, but to also receive these duties. The World Trade Organization agreed and found the amendment to be contrary to our trade obligations. Nevertheless, the law is still on the books. As a result, many of our export industries may face retaliatory sanctions.

As I said, this amendment was slipped into an appropriations conference report without full debate in the Senate. The Finance Committee, as the committee of jurisdiction and the committee with expertise in international trade, never had a chance to review the amendment. Now, I'm not surprised that a bill that was never considered by the committee of expertise or even the full Senate was found to violate our international commitments.

But, even aside from the WTO ruling, there are a number of other problems with the way the amendment operates. For example, earlier this year the Congressional Budget Office issued a report in which it found that, regardless of the economic harm which can be caused by retaliation, the amendment is detrimental to the overall economic welfare of the United States. An earlier report issued by the Department of Treasury Inspector General found that the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection made $25 million in overpayments when disbursing funds. The report also faulted the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection because qualifying expenditures claimed by domestic producers are not verified on a routine basis. So, there are a lot of problems with the way this program functions that are totally independent from our WTO obligations.

But because the Finance Committee never had an opportunity to review the amendment, these problems were never addressed. Instead of working with the Committee to address these problems, they took a different tack. In this year's omnibus appropriations bill they decided to require our United States Trade Representative and the Department of Commerce to negotiate the right for WTO members to distribute monies collected from antidumping and countervailing duty measures. In short, they are directing our trade negotiators to go back to the negotiating table and try to negotiate for something which we have already lost. I doubt our trading partners will be sympathetic.

The Appropriations Committee also required the Office of the United States Trade Representative to create a new position of Chief Negotiator for Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement. Now, this may be good idea-but, again the Finance Committee has not had an opportunity to review this provision so we do not know if this is an appropriate use of government resources or not. We do know that the decision about whether to create new trade negotiating positions is up to the Finance Committee, not the Appropriations Committee.

Unfortunately Mr. President, these provisions are just exemplary. There are many other provisions in the bill dealing with international trade that, frankly, should not be in there. Whatever position you may take on the merits of these provisions, international trade negotiations and antidumping and countervailing duty laws are plainly matters within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Finance. The vast trade implications of these provisions were not carefully weighed by the Committee on Finance. This is bad precedent-and I sincerely hope we will not see similar actions in the future.

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