THIS SEARCH     THIS DOCUMENT     THIS CR ISSUE     GO TO
Next Hit        Forward           Next Document     New CR Search
Prev Hit        Back              Prev Document     HomePage
Hit List        Best Sections     Daily Digest      Help
                Contents Display    

[Page: S5798]  GPO's PDF
---

   By Mr. ROCKEFELLER:

   S. 981. A bill to provide emergency assistance for families receiving assistance under part A of title IV of the Social Security Act and low-income working families; to the Committee on Finance.

   Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, we all know the cost of gasoline has been increasing very dramatically and the people of my State, a very rural State, have to travel very long distances. There is little public transportation in rural counties, and as a result they have to use their cars and have to, therefore, buy a lot of gas.

   Today I am introducing legislation to give temporary help to those who need it most, particularly low-income families, workers, seniors, and, frankly, students who have to drive long distances each day to get to their work, their school, and to critical health care.

   In West Virginia prices of gas have gone up, as they have everywhere. In the North and South they have gone up by a great deal. People suffer because of that. I know high prices affect everyone when it comes to gas, but they do hit lower income people in the most painful way. When you are already struggling to pay the cost of housing and the cost of education or whatever it might be, the cost of gas aggregated over a period of time becomes a very painful item. As I indicated, if you are in a rural area, your problem is much worse because there is not public transportation. This is a very crucial fact. It means you have to use your automobile. It means you have to buy the gas to put in the automobile.

   I support the development of long-term energy policies and hope we will do that in a wise way. But for those who pay their living expenses day to day, that will not come soon enough. Therefore, my bill is a simple one. It is a temporary approach to what I believe is already, in fact, something of an emergency.

   The bill is modeled on the successful Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, which helps working families and seniors cope with home heating costs. The proposal which I call LIGAP--not out of my poetic sense but simply because it stands for Low-Income Gasoline Assistance Program--would give grants to States for an emergency assistance program for people who must drive 30 miles a day or an average of 150 miles a week for work, for education related to work, or scheduled routine health care.

   This new program will have similar income eligibility guidelines as the LIHEAP program. Therefore, it will not be difficult to administer. It is triggered when a State's average gasoline price hits the unmanageable current level. It is also triggered off when gas prices decline. Every eligible person or family will get a monthly stipend of $25 to $75 to help cover the high cost of gasoline.

   This legislation encourages States to use their block grant funding to help welfare recipients pay for transportation costs, necessary for people getting off welfare to get to work. Some States, including West Virginia, are already using welfare reform moneys as part of their welfare-to-work initiatives to help with transportation costs. I think that is a very important thing for States to do. I am proud of my State's initiative, and I am proud of their approach to welfare reform.

   There obviously are not any magic bullets in bringing some sanity back to gasoline pricing, but this bill is designed to offer at least much-needed relief to West Virginians and other Americans who simply cannot make ends meet while we are in the throes of high gasoline costs. I think it is a sensible bill, and I hope at the appropriate time it will get favorable consideration.

   By Mr. DURBIN (for himself, Mr. ROCKEFELLER, Mr. BYRD, Mr. HOLLINGS, Mr. SPECTER, and Ms. MIKULSKI):

   S. 979. A bill to amend United States trade laws to address more effectively import crises, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.

   Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce bipartisan legislation known as the Fair Trade Law Reform Act of 2001 with my colleagues Senators ROCKEFELLER, BYRD, HOLLINGS, SPECTER, and MIKULSKI. This legislation will change for the better the way we trade with our global trading partners.

   We talked a lot about trade in the last Congress. We voted to extend Permanent Normal Trade Relations status to China. We debated and passed the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act. Now, we have a new administration asking for Trade Promotion Authority and bilateral trade agreements with Jordan and Vietnam.

   Today, we have just passed the President's tax bill. As far as I am concerned, the Congress and more specifically the Senate Committee on Finance should now turn its attention to the important matter of trade between our country and our global trading partners around the world. We need to have a discussion about what we are doing to make sure our manufacturers, our steel makers, our textile workers and our farmers are able to compete on a level playing field.

   One industry, in particular, has been facing a deluge of imports from some 30 nations. The U.S. steel industry has for the last 4 years been battered by imports from foreign countries. We know from prior unfair trade cases that much of it is being dumped on our shores, and subsidized by foreign governments, at prices that are at historic lows. And we are talking about blatant subsidization. Look at the Korean government's relation to Hanbo and Posco. To this date, they have not fully divested their government role in those two steelmaking entities.

   Many of the same nations who have been exporting steel to the U.S., have erected import restraints in their own countries or have filed dumping cases to keep this deluge from their own shores. The U.S. has become the export market of first and last resort for the whole world.

   Some of these same nations throughout Europe and Asia, who erected trade barriers to this onslaught because of the harm it threatened over there, are arguing that our industry is not similarly threatened, or that our law doesn't permit us to take remedial action, even temporarily. Some argue that the industry has not been sufficiently harmed by this situation. Not

[Page: S5799]  GPO's PDF

   One week ago today, Northwestern Wire and Rod in Sterling, IL, shut down its furnace. It will roll out the rest of its billets and then close its doors. That's almost 1,500 employees. Over one-third of the residents of Sterling get their health insurance through Northwestern steel . Acme Steel has had financial difficulties. Five Illinois steel companies have either shut their doors or declared bankruptcy since 1998 and I don't see an end in sight.

   My constituents are told that this is just the ``free market'' at work. That this is just the world markets working out the kinks. I find all this incredible. Some of these other nations must be laughing up their sleeves at our apparent helplessness and we are the only ones who don't get the joke.

   Let me state for the record: I believe that free trade is very important for the United States. I also believe that fair trade is just as important. We are not helpless. We do not expect our businesses to all go under, our workers to all be laid off, before we wake up and take action.

   We must take action in the 107th Congress to address basic inadequacies of our trade laws. We have made it easier to send our products and services to other countries. Yet, we haven't seemed to be able to address successfully the steel crisis that's been with us now for nearly 4 years.

   Our trade laws, particularly the antidumping and countervailing duty laws, have long been, and remain, critically important to the U.S. manufacturing sector. They are the last line of defense for U.S. industries, operating on market-economy principles, against injury caused by unfairly traded imports. The heart of U.S. trade policy maintains that while America keeps an open market to fairly traded goods of any origin, our industries and workers will not be subject to injury from unfairly traded imports because the trade laws will be enforced and kept up-to-date.

   The last general reform of the U.S. trade laws, unconnected to any particular trade agreement, occurred more than a decade ago. In that time, the problems to which these laws must respond have changed considerably, as underscored by the late 1990s Asian and Russian economic conflagrations and the ripple effect of results felt worldwide. It has become painfully clear that current trade laws are either incapable of responding to the kinds of sudden import surges--causing dramatic and rapid injury--or we have had various administrations that were unable to enforce them.

   Our trade laws themselves are fully consistent with WTO rules. But they need to be revisited and made stronger. This bipartisan legislation would do several things:

   First, we should strengthen section 201 language by removing a very high causation standard and replacing that standard with a lower threshold by which U.S. industries and workers can prove their cases more easily. Let me state for the record that if we reform our trade laws and we ensure our trading partners know we are serious about enforcing those laws, the incentive to dump steel or other imported products will be reduced.

   Second, the AD/CVD sections of this bill respond to the fact that current U.S. law makes relief unnecessarily difficult to obtain, imposing standards more onerous than those in the relevant WTO agreements. By updating the antidumping and countervailing duty laws, in light of new global economic realities to which those laws must now respond, we will reverse errant court decisions that had limited the laws' remedial reach in a manner never contemplated by the Congress.

   And finally, we will establish a steel import monitoring provision, comparable to WTO-compatible programs maintained by other WTO members such as the EU, Canada, and Mexico.

   The Congress, I might add, has not been silent during this debate over the last several years. We have had extensive debate in both the House and Senate and we passed the Byrd-Durbin Steel Loan Guarantee Program last year. This legislation was intended to provide immediate relief to qualified steel firms that have fallen on hard times. Unfortunately, the loan guarantee wasn't as successful as we had hoped. Despite a guarantee of 85 percent by the Federal Government, private creditors didn't step up to the plate and do their part to help our Nation's steel industry.

   So, despite our still growing economy, despite our efforts to date, despite fiscal dilemmas in other parts of the world, we can't forget the steel industry. With over 10,000 steelworkers out of jobs and imports still fluctuating, I want to go home and tell my constituents in the steel pipe and tube industry that we have a solution to their woes. Let's send a clear signal to our trading partners, to our farmers, and to our manufacturers that we don't intend to stand by and lose more and more jobs because of unfair trading practices.

   I thank my colleagues for helping me draft this legislation and I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Finance Committee to having hearings, to marking up this important piece of legislation, and enacting it into law.

   Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues, Senators DURBIN, HOLLINGS, and BYRD, in introducing the Trade Law Reform Act of 2001. It has been far too long, well over a decade in fact, since the last general reform of our trade laws, and current circumstances, particularly the ongoing steel crisis that has resulted in 18 American steel companies declaring for bankruptcy since 1997, necessitate the prompt action of Congress.

   Nothing short of section 201 can save the American steel industry. I have written President Bush twice since he took office in January urgently pleading with him to initiate a section 201 case before the International Trade Commission. In the time between my first and second letters, five U.S. steelmakers filed for bankruptcy. Imports have continued at record levels and prices have not rebounded. Absent a Section 201, any measures we take up in the Congress to redress the steel crisis are akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

   Despite the necessity of an immediate section 201 on steel , we must not cease in our efforts to improve the proper functioning of our trade laws. The safeguard, countervailing duty, and anti-dumping laws are vital to the manufacturing sector of our economy. They are often the first and last line of defense for U.S. industries injured by unfairly or illegally traded imports. Companies, workers, families, and communities rely heavily on these laws to prevent the ill-effects of unfair trade by our trading partners.

   Unfortunately, recent events like the steel import crisis have demonstrated how painfully inadequate our current trade laws are in responding to rapid import surges. The flooding of U.S. markets with unfairly or illegally traded steel has caused severe and irreparable harm to our steelworkers, their families, and communities, and it is high time we revisit our trade laws in an effort to make our laws more responsive to the changing realities of the global economy. In the case of steel , I refer to the problem of foreign steel overcapacity that continually finds its way into the open U.S. market where it seriously injures our domestic steel manufacturers.

   The reforms we are proposing today fall into three categories. Title I of the act improves the ability of our safeguard laws, often referred to as section 201, to adequately respond to import surges such as the flood of cheap steel that began to hit U.S. shores in 1997 and has not yet abated. Section 201 allows U.S. producers to obtain relief from serious injury that is substantially caused by imports even in the absence of unfair trade . However, the current U.S. safeguard standard for proving that a U.S. industry has been seriously injured by imports is stricter than the corresponding standard in the WTO Safeguards Agreement, a discrepancy which places U.S. manufacturers at a disadvantage with regard to their foreign trading partners. Whereas a foreign producer must prove only that an import surge, like the current steel import crisis, is a cause of injury, domestic producers are hindered by our trade laws which require our

   domestic industry to prove that the imports are a substantial cause of injury.

   This inequity hampers the ability of our domestic industries to obtain relief from unfairly traded imports and creates an unequal playing field on which

[Page: S5800]  GPO's PDF

   Title II of this legislation updates our anti-dumping and countervailing duty laws to make them more effective for a rapidly-changing marketplace. First, the bill makes it tougher for our trading partners to circumvent an anti-dumping or countervailing duty order. No longer will foreign nations be able to skirt around our laws by making slight alterations to the products they are exporting to the U.S. This legislation clarifies that antidumping and countervailing duty orders include products that have been changed in only minor respects.

   In addition, the bill provides that the ITC cannot conclude that imports do not have a significant effect on domestic prices simply on the basis of the magnitude or stability of the volume of imports. This allows the Commission to take into account the fact that in some cases and for some industries, even small volumes of imports can have significant price effects and negatively impact the domestic industry.

   Title III creates a steel import monitoring program designed to act as an early notification system when imports begin flooding the U.S. market. When the steel import surge began in July 1997, it was many months, even close to a year, before anyone in the administration would even admit that there was a spike in imports that was potentially harmful to the domestic industry. During that time, companies went bankrupt and thousands of steelworkers were laid off.

   These provisions will make it easier to track imports and provide much quicker notification of potentially harmful import surges. Quite simply, the sooner we learn of unfair import surges, the sooner the administration, Congress, and the industry itself can take the necessary steps to provide steelworkers and steel companies with the relief they deserve.

   By recognizing the changed reality of the international marketplace and how quickly import surges become major crises, the bill being introduced today provides much needed improvements of our trade laws. Too many of the current provisions designed to provide relief to our domestic manufacturing sector have been antiquated by recent changes in the global economy and the structure of international trade . It is time we reaffirm our commitment to our manufacturing base by updating and enhancing the very laws designed to protect U.S. manufacturers from unfair and illegal imports from abroad. The Trade Law Reform Act of 2001 does just that.

   Once again, I must reiterate that only an immediate section 201 on steel can preserve basic steelmaking capacity in the United States. While this bill cannot solve the steel crisis by itself, it does represent a significant step in the right direction.

   By Mr. FITZGERALD (for himself and Mr. DORGAN):

   S. 980. A bill to provide for the improvement of the safety of child restraints in passenger motor vehicles, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

   Mr. FITZGERALD. Mr. President, late last year, Congress passed the Transportation Recall Enhancement Accountability and Documentation, or TREAD Act. That new law includes a bill I authored, the Child Passenger Act of 2000, which requires the Department of Transportation to update its standards on child safety seats for infants and toddlers. Today, I rise to introduce another bill, which represents the next step in our effort to ensure that all of our Nation's children are adequately protected in motor vehicle crashes.

>>>

THIS SEARCH     THIS DOCUMENT     THIS CR ISSUE     GO TO
Next Hit        Forward           Next Document     New CR Search
Prev Hit        Back              Prev Document     HomePage
Hit List        Best Sections     Daily Digest      Help
                Contents Display