Barbara Mikulski: “I join with pride and enthusiasm my colleagues, Senator Rockefeller and Senator Wellstone, in supporting this amendment…”

“I join with pride and enthusiasm my colleagues, Senator Rockefeller and Senator Wellstone, in supporting this amendment to provide a safety net for American steelworkers who have been battered by decades of unfair and illegal trade practices. American steelworkers and their retirees worked very hard and played by the rules. They have served our country in war, building our ships, tanks, and weapons. I was so proud of the fact that in my own hometown of Baltimore, at Bethlehem Steel, we made the steel to repair the U.S.S. Cole so it could go back out to sea and continue to defend America. That is what steel is all about. It builds America. It makes us strong. It has made us strong in war, and it has made us strong in peace, making the steel for our buildings, our cars, our bridges, our roads. Yet for decades, our Government has watched as the steel industry withered, not because steel was unproductive, not because steel was overpriced, but because of cheap, subsidized foreign steel that has been dumped on our markets and, I might add, below the cost of production. That is what makes it illegal.”