Budget and Trade Deficits Continue to Rise
BUDGET AND TRADE DEFICITS CONTINUE TO RISE -- (House of Representatives - February 15, 2005)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, last week the President sent his 2006 budget request to Congress. Just yesterday, he added to that request for supplemental funds for fiscal year 2005. His own estimate shows staggering budget deficits to be handed down to the next generation, and to many future generations. In fact, this administration is setting new world records all over the place. Not only record budget deficits but also, importantly, record trade deficits. In fact, they have now created a two-headed monster. This administration is exporting its bankrupt economic policies around the world through failed trade policies. Just look at the numbers. Never has America had trade deficits over one-half trillion dollars. Last year, $617 billion, every year going deeper and deeper, sinking deeper into trade deficit with our trade competitors around the world. This is not an issue for Republicans and Democrats. This is going to hit everybody's wallets, from Wall Street to Main Street.
The trade deficit for calendar year 2004 smashed every record on the books. That is right. Over one-half trillion dollars. Now, who are these deficits with? Let us start with China. If you go out to San Diego and Los Angeles harbor, you can see ships coming in from Asia as far as the eye can see. Every single year of this Presidency, we have seen the red ink from China get deeper and deeper. In fact, last year we were in debt to them, just for last year, over $162 billion. That was up almost a third from the prior year. The manufacturing portion of our overall deficit worsened to $465.8 billion, 16 percent more than the record set the prior year. With every billion dollars, 20,000 more jobs in this country vanish. The deficit in advanced technology products, which was supposed to save us, worsened to $37 billion in 2004, fully 38 percent worse than the record the year before. One can look in every sector with almost every major trading nation and America is deep in red ink.
One other dubious record. People talk about NAFTA. Here are the figures for Canada for 2003, the highest level on record, over $67 billion. And with Mexico under NAFTA, the budget last year was close to $50 billion, nearly a $110.8 billion deficit in trade with those two countries under NAFTA in 2004. The net result of all of this is the weakening of our dollar. Even Bloomberg says the steady decline in the dollar is likely to resume again. Secretary Snow says the administration believes in a strong dollar, but what is happening does not match his rhetoric. Meanwhile, prices go up for our consumers in everything, including petroleum, which is the basis for gasoline, and prices have been going up there.
Make no mistake, America ends up owing somebody else. But, in fact, it is our children and grandchildren that end up becoming less independent as a nation because of these deficits as we see one industry after another decline. The President's trade deficits and budget deficits are setting these all-time records.
I ask myself, in the major sector of deficit, which is oil, when is America going to wake up? When are we going to have real leadership here in Washington for new sources of energy so that these numbers stop heading in a downward direction? Dependence is not what America's founders had in mind. They did not envision an America in hock to the world. We want an America that is strong and independent, not saddled with debt and beholden to foreign banks.
It is time to tell our President to stop; stop letting our trade partners walk all over us; stop negotiating trade deals like CAFTA that hurt our workers and give workers in other places no chance to improve their lot when there are no labor standards and environmental standards that are enforceable; stop trading away America's economic future. America needs a positive economic future that will help create good jobs, new wealth and new opportunity, not the Bush administration's bankrupt trade and fiscal policies that send our jobs overseas, our wealth to banks in Beijing and Saudi Arabia, to whom we now owe interest, and the bill for all this nonsense to our children and grandchildren.
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