Political Quotes

“I rise in support of the U.S.- Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, and I urge the Speaker of the House to bring this important measure before the House for an up-or-down vote, and submit for the Record two articles, one a column recently published in the New York Times by Edward Schumacher-Matos, a former foreign correspondent for the Times and a visiting professor of Latin American studies at Harvard, as well as an editorial in this week's Washington Post in support of the trade agreement. Killing a Trade Pact (By Edward Schumacher-Matos) President Bush has been urging Congress to approve a pending trade agreement with Colombia, an ally that recently almost went to war with Venezuela and Hugo Chavez. Even though the agreement includes the labor and environmental conditions that Congress wanted, many Democrats, including Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, now say that Colombia must first punish whomever has been assassinating the members of the nation's trade unions before the agreement can pass. An examination of the Democrats' claims, however, finds that their faith in the assertions of human-rights groups is more righteous than right. Union members have been assassinated, but the reported number is highly exaggerated. Even one murder for union organizing is atrocious, but isolated killings do not justify holding up the trade agreement. All sides agree that trade-union murders in Colombia, like all violence, have declined drastically in recent years.”