John Joseph Moakley: “This debate is going to be constrained today in the House. It is being held at an unusually early hour, with little…”

“This debate is going to be constrained today in the House. It is being held at an unusually early hour, with little notice to Members, except at 11 o'clock last night; and the debate itself is constrained by this rule to 2 hours, although the legislation which passed this body, a lame duck Congress, I might add, without any amendments allowed, was to have up to 20 hours of debate. This should be an important debate, with the United States running this year probably a $300 billion-plus trade deficit, something that we cannot do forever without dire consequences, although the gentleman from California spoke eloquently earlier about how wonderful it is to import things. Of course, if you import more than you export, you are losing jobs and you are running up a tab with foreign nations, and the U.S. is running up a tab at a record rate, $300 billion a year, probably $80 billion with China this year. We are helping to finance their military expansion and other things that the dictators are doing over there with our addiction to their extraordinarily cheap exports.”