Dana Rohrabacher: “Mr. Chairman, I certainly respect those people, especially the gentleman from Alaska (Chairman Young) for the very hard…”

“Mr. Chairman, I certainly respect those people, especially the gentleman from Alaska (Chairman Young) for the very hard work they have put into this legislation. It has always been my intent to support this legislation. So this is not done with the spirit of anything except trying to do something for the American people because this is an opportunity that we have today to start working on a very positive idea. There is no reason for us to put this off. If we put this on this legislation today, this idea will move forward, and a lot of work will be done on this, and we will move toward this goal. If this amendment fails, what we have done is condemn the American people to tens of billions of dollars of expense that could have been taken up by foreign manufacturers who are importing their goods into our ports and putting their goods onto our market and undercutting our domestic manufacturers. Earlier the gentleman from Alaska (Chairman Young) suggested that perhaps the ports already have this authority, thus this amendment is redundant. Let me say if that is the analysis, why not pass it then? There is no reason then, if the ports already have this authority, why are we so hesitant about passing this? The reason we are so hesitant is that there are powerful interests at play. We should be interested in what is the effect on the American people.”