Muslims For Kucinich

Kucinich gave the following speech in Congress on May 17, 2005

On May 17, 2005, Congressman Sherrod Brown, of Ohio's 13th congressional district, was recognized for 60 minutes. Mr. Brown concluded his opening remarks by saying, "Come May 28, we should bury the Central American Free Trade Agreement. We should renegotiate a new CAFTA so that we can negotiate and trade more with our neighbors on terms that will help lift up workers in all six of the NAFTA countries and in the United States.

"Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio."

Mr. KUCINICH:

"I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for his ever-present vigilance on issues that affect American workers and the American economy. I rise tonight to join him in objecting to CAFTA and in pointing out to the people why it is so important that CAFTA be defeated. All of these trade agreements have been about one thing and one thing only--cheap labor. Corporations create conditions where they help to pass these agreements so that they can move jobs out of this country and create jobs in other countries but the jobs in the other countries are not benefiting people because they are working, in some cases, far below the poverty level. CAFTA, as it was with NAFTA, creates conditions where workers have no rights. As a matter of fact, the trade agreements are written specifically to preclude workers having the right to collective bargaining, the right to organize, the right to strike, the right to decent wages and benefits, the right to a safe workplace, the right to be compensated if you are injured on the job, the right to a secure retirement, the right to participate in the political process. All of those are swept aside under CAFTA as they were under NAFTA.

"What happens when jobs are created under these trade agreements? First of all, workers are working for a pittance. Secondly, they have no protections whatsoever. They are just basically human chattel. Third, there is no job security. They can be moved around. Beyond that, these trade agreements have no protections against child labor, prison labor, slave labor. They have no protections for the water or the air."

Mr. BROWN:

"As the gentleman was talking, I am thinking about what he said a few nights ago. There is no protection for the environment, for workers, but there is very good protection in this bill for a group that is very powerful in this body and that is the prescription drug industry. My colleague spoke last week about what the drug industry did in Central America, what the United States Trade Rep did on behalf of the drug industry that gave them a whole lot more rights than workers get, a whole lot more protections than the environment get.

"Would my colleague talk a little bit about that?"

Mr. KUCINICH:

"Yes. The agreements are written so that corporations have protections and their patents have protections and people who need drugs in certain countries for their own health often cannot afford them because the patent protections are supplied to corporations under these trade agreements but countries cannot go ahead and make generic equivalents because it would challenge the way the trade laws are structured. So these trade agreements are never written to benefit people. They are written to benefit corporations. We have to remember that even in our own country, corporations often have greater powers than individuals. There was an 1895, I believe it was, Santa Clara County decision by the Supreme Court which basically ceded to corporations a whole range of rights that put them on equal status with people. Yet corporations do not want to recognize the fundamental human rights that workers have, the fundamental responsibility that we all have to protecting the environment, and so they are given privileges in this country to avoid responsibility for protecting our air and water, to avoid responsibility for protecting workers' pensions, to avoid responsibility for providing for a safe workplace. They often can get off on some of their violations. Yet these trade agreements basically create a race to the bottom on standards, on rights, on principles, on the environment. That is why it is absolutely critical that my colleague has been leading the way on this and I am glad to join him in challenging what this does to people.

"There are moral principles here. These principles go beyond politics. Pope Leo XIII when he wrote Rerum Novarum talked about the rights of workers. Pope Paul VI when he wrote his encyclical Progressive Populorum spoke about how corporations have responsibilities. There are fundamental principles that are engrained in a Judeo-Christian ethic, in a body where we celebrate, we are told, these kind of principles which are a bedrock of our society, yet they are just swept aside in favor of profit. It is not supposed to be that way.

"That is why so many of us stood with young people in the streets of Seattle to challenge the WTO. That is why people are gathering all over this country challenging the Central American Free Trade Agreement. That is why our brothers and sisters in Central America need us to stand up.

"Yo creo que es muy importante pelear por los derechos de los trabajadores. It is very important to take a stand for the rights of workers."

Mr. BROWN:

"Taking back my time for a moment, as we talked about a week or so ago, while the six presidents were flying around the United States on a junket paid for by the Chamber of Commerce and then met with President Bush and all, they mentioned a lot of things about CAFTA but they never mentioned the kind of opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, not just from American workers but from workers in every one of those countries. There were demonstrations and protests of thousands of people in virtually every capital city in the six countries. To the point that the president of Costa Rica, as I said in my earlier remarks, the president of Costa Rica now is saying he does not want to see this ratified until he sees some real guarantees in this agreement that the poor in his country, and in his country there are a large number of very poor people, and the workers in his country will not be left out of the agreement. So far, they are left out and he is dissatisfied by that.

"But I think when those presidents have come home, both when they left, they saw these kinds of demonstrations, huge opposition among the people of those countries, and that huge opposition has continued. This Congress should simply not believe when these six presidents are walking around after their Chamber of Commerce tour, when they came to our offices and argued for this Central American free labor agreement, my colleagues need to understand that just because those six presidents were for it does not mean their countrymen and countrywomen were."

Mr. KUCINICH:

"A member of congress from one of these Central American countries who will be meeting with a group of Congressmen soon so I do not want to release his name just yet, told me that when a bill that would help facilitate CAFTA came before the House in his country, that it was brought in at about 3 in the morning, that members did not have a chance to read it, that they did not know that it would facilitate the privatization of public services, for example, and that they were basically encouraged to vote for it sight unseen.

" These are the kind of fundamental violations of democratic principles and democratic rights which we see people in Central America already suffering even before this agreement is passed. What happens is these corporations have so much power in these other countries that legislatures are steamrolled. Here in the Congress of the United States, people not only in Central America but in this country are depending on Members to stand up, depending on us to stand up for the basic rights of workers but also depending on us to stand up to stop the continued erosion of manufacturing jobs in this country.

"As my colleague points out in his chart there on the trade deficit, it is obvious that NAFTA has not resulted in creating jobs in this country. It has resulted in taking good-paying manufacturing jobs out of this country. Those are jobs that supported middle-class existence for many families. Those are jobs that helped sustain communities. Those are jobs that helped protect small business. Those are jobs that had health care benefits. Those are jobs that let people buy homes. Those are jobs that let people send their children to college. And now we are seeing our whole way of life adversely affected by these trade agreements. That is why CAFTA presents us with an opportunity to say, stop, stop, let's start to go back through the whole structure of trade agreements and demand that no agreement can ever exist unless it has fundamental protections for workers' rights, human rights and the environment, because frankly when corporations sweep those aside, that is how they make their profit."

Mr. BROWN:

"Taking back my time, it is no surprise, or no coincidence, that as this trade deficit has increased from $38 billion the year I first ran for Congress 12\1/2\ years ago to last year's deficit of $618 billion, that is the same trajectory where we have seen health benefits cut, where we have seen workers in our country losing their pensions. When we lose these manufacturing jobs, every time a Ford worker loses his job or her job in Avon Lake or in Cleveland, that is often one fewer person in Ohio with health benefits, one less person that has a pension. These trade agreements clearly have pulled down the standard of living for way too many of my colleague's constituents and way too many of mine, way too many people in North Carolina where textiles and the apparel job loss have devastated their part of the country.

"I want to make a prediction. My colleague made a statement a minute ago that in one of the Central American countries with whom we have negotiated this deal that legislation was passed in the middle of the night. I will make a prediction. Based on a lot of facts, the facts that every major piece of legislation, or virtually every major piece of legislation this Congress has considered the last 2 years, the debate started about this time of night, maybe even a little later, started about midnight, started around 1 o'clock, the debates on these very important issues, Head Start, money for veterans' benefits, money for education, $87 billion for Iraq, the major tax cuts, Medicare and the trade promotion authority. The last big trade agreement this Congress voted for, we voted in the middle of the night. The roll call was left open. It is normally only 15 minutes. The roll call was left open for well over an hour as the majority leader, Tom DeLay, strong- armed, cajoled, offered with a carrot, threatened with a stick, until he got two North Carolina Congressmen to change their votes. We have seen that over and over. My prediction is that when the Central American Free Trade Agreement, if it comes to this Congress in the next 6 weeks, even though it is already past this deadline, this self- imposed deadline, this 1-year anniversary of the signing of CAFTA, whenever it comes, either by the end of this month or the end of next month, you can bet that that is going to be a middle-of-the-night vote where there is incredible political pressure, where there are threats, where there are transfers in some cases, promises on one bill, on the Medicare bill, promises of campaign cash on the House floor as claimed by one of my colleagues, a Republican from Michigan, where there are all kinds of goodies offered to this Member of Congress or that Member of Congress to get a vote. I am just terrified that even though the American people clearly do not like the Central American Free Trade Agreement, even though the American people recognize the kind of job loss that our State of Ohio and so many other States, especially the States in red, have been hit the hardest, with all this job loss, with all this opposition from the American people and from Members of Congress that the administration will do what it did with trade promotion authority and offer all kinds of things to these Members of Congress to get them to change their vote and vote the opposite of what they have promised and vote the opposite of what their constituents asked them to."

Mr. KUCINICH:

"Mr. Speaker, when I was traveling the country, I had the opportunity to visit many areas around America. I would stand in front of plant gates that were padlocked. I saw grass growing in parking lots which were once filled with cars, where workers would go into a plant and they would make steel, cars, washing machines, sewing machines, truck bodies. And now their plant gates are padlocked and there is grass growing in the parking lots. All of America is littered with the rusting hulks of huge manufacturing plants. Yet there are many people who remain in those communities who have the ability to do the work. It is not that there is no work to be done. It is not that we are not consuming the very products which were made once in America. But they are being made now elsewhere at a fraction of the price, where workers are underpaid, where they have no rights.

"When we started years ago challenging these trade agreements, some of us were told, well, you are being an isolationist; we have to have trade. Well, it is true, we do have to have trade; but we have to have fair trade. We have to have trade which respects the undeniable fact that all people are interdependent and interconnected. These trade agreements create a divide, a chasm, between the very wealthy and the increasingly poor. These trade agreements have helped to bring about the destructive undermining of America's middle class.

"So when you look at that map, I say to the gentleman, and you can see not only various colors of States, depending on how many jobs they have lost, but behind those statistics are individual stories of dreams that were shattered, of families that were broken, of opportunities that were denied, of futures that were totally changed, of the American Dream being dashed, of the American Dream being dashed. That is why we are standing here tonight, challenging CAFTA and, by reference, all of the other trade agreements that have passed."

Mr. BROWN:

"Mr. Speaker, I will close as I just listen to my friend talk about seeing this country as he has seen it up close, and we all have seen it. Again, these are all numbers, 200,000, 200,000, 57,000, trade deficits of billions and tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars; they are all numbers. But I think almost every Member of Congress, those of us that really get out in our communities, and that is most of us on both sides of the aisle, really have seen the kind of pain that people suffer when someone loses a job after being in a plant for 30 years and loses their pension or loses their health benefits, and they are 58 years old and they cannot get Medicare yet. Or they are 35 years old and they cannot send their kid to school, they had been saving a little bit of money: all that that means for those children, for those families, for those school districts that have lost that revenue when a plant closes, for those communities that can no longer protect their citizens with adequate police and fire protection. These are real people, these are real jobs, real communities, real people, real dreams, real lives.

"When I think about our trade policy and what we have done, and our trade policy has always been for years to outsource jobs, to lose our manufacturing jobs, shut these plants down, encourage these companies to hire cheap labor in the developing world, do not really give those people any chance, because they are not paying them enough money. My definition of successful trade policy is that when the workers in poor countries cannot just make American products, make products that they export back into the United States, but that those workers can actually buy products made in the United States, then we will see a trade policy which lifts those workers up so they have a decent standard of living in Guatemala or in India or in Mexico, and, at the same time, lifts our workers up so we can continue our strong food safety standards, environmental standards, worker rights, and wages in our country."

Mr. KUCINICH:

"Mr. Speaker, before we conclude, it appears to me that there is an opening here for this Congress, that at a time when we are challenging these trade agreements, we have an opportunity to present an alternative. That alternative should not just be creating a new architecture for trade with workers' rights, human rights, and environmental quality principles; but that alternative should also include an American manufacturing policy, a new one, a new American manufacturing policy which declares that the maintenance of steel, automotive, and aerospace is vital to our national security; that for that reason, we should be thinking in terms of rebuilding automotive, with cars that are more fuel economical. We should be thinking of rebuilding steel, because we consume so much steel in this country; there are so many mills that we could actually bring back to life. We should be thinking about rebuilding aerospace, not shipping jobs overseas. Right now, our trade deficit with China is approaching about $160 billion, is it not?"

Mr. BROWN:

"Slightly over that."

Mr. KUCINICH:

"Right. China at this moment is organizing its economy to be able to excel in steel, automotive, and aerospace because Chinese leaders recognize that it is those very industries that enabled America 50 years ago to achieve preeminence in all the world. So we need a new American manufacturing policy, and we need a new policy which rebuilds our infrastructure. Just as FDR understood that the New Deal was an opportunity to put millions of people back to work, we should create a deal where we rebuild our infrastructure, where we rebuild our bridges, our water systems, our sewer systems; where we rebuild parks and hospitals and schools; where we rebuild America's infrastructure and create millions of new jobs, and then that would be an investment that would enable people to go back and start factories again.

"Mr. Speaker, we need a new direction in this country. We need a new approach with our economy. We have to do something about this trade deficit, but we have to make sure that our basic infrastructure is strong to help create productivity; and we also have to do something about our tax system, which is incentivizing the movement of jobs out of this country, our tax system where 34 percent of the tax cuts go to the top one percent.

"Also, we have to recognize, as some of our major industries are recognizing, that if we are going to protect industry in this country, then we have to have a universal, single-payer health care system. Because we know right now that the automotive business is in trouble in part because of the health care costs. We need a system where everyone is covered; that would help American manufacturing as well.

"And we need to protect people's retirement security. It is absolutely a disgrace that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation right now has over $26 billion in the hole, and that they have over $100 billion in unfunded pension liabilities they are facing, and all the corporations in America are looking right now to dump their pension obligations on the government. Right now people over 55 years old have the lowest level of savings; for seven consecutive quarters, it is at $10,400. It is the lowest consecutive quarter since 1934. So people's savings are being undermined, their pensions are being lost, and now there is an attack on Social Security.

"All of this fits together. We have to have an holistic view and vision of what our country needs. We need to have health care and retirement security. We need to have retirement security. We need to rebuild our infrastructure and have a new manufacturing policy. But we need to first take care of business, which means standing up here, challenging CAFTA and saying we are going to use the defeat of CAFTA as an opportunity for a new beginning in the American economy.

"I want to thank my good friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), for the leadership that he has shown on this; and I want to tell him what an honor it has been to be on the floor with him this evening."

Mr. BROWN:

"Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) for his leadership on this whole array of issues. I would summarize by echoing what he said, that as the CAFTA countdown, as CAFTA is buried at the end of this month, the 1-year anniversary of CAFTA, it is important as we defeat CAFTA that we look at all of those issues that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) talked about, and especially that we think about a new trade agreement with Central American countries that lifts workers in both, in all seven of our countries, lifts workers' standards, lifts environmental standards, helps workers and families and communities in all of the Central American Free Trade Agreement countries, and in our country. It can be a win-win for all of us, instead of the kind of downward slide that we have seen in our trade policy."