Political Quotes

“I now yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Washington (Mr. McDermott), the ranking member on Trade. (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this bill to grant permanent normal trade relations to Russia and Moldova. Let's begin with Russia. Russia joined the WTO this summer. Congress does not have veto power on that. All we can do here is decide whether to allow U.S. businesses and workers to see the benefits of Russia's WTO obligations. Will Russia always honor these obligations on its own initiative? Probably not. But Russia's WTO membership means we can at least hold them to those obligations, and we must be prepared to enforce those obligations. That is a lesson we've learned the hard way over the last few years. This bill actually does that. This bill has strong antibribery and anticorruption provisions. It has mechanisms to help strengthen our intellectual property rights. But that's not all. Another critical piece of this bill is the Magnitsky Act, placing real sanctions on those individuals who are complicit in human rights violations. This is a serious policy upgrade and a big win for human rights. At the end of the day, Russia's entry into the WTO can be expected to create real jobs here in the U.S. by reducing tariffs and other barriers to U.S.-made goods and services. The tariffs on information technology products are completely eliminated.…”