Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, the efforts of the gentleman from California [Mr. Cox], though well-intentioned, are little more than giving a sweet talk to a dying man. It does not really change things. We spend a little bit more money to find out what we already know, that the People's Republic of China is using slave labor, making goods, and sending goods to the United States of America to be sold here and put Americans out of work. There is nothing new about that. There is nothing new about the fact that they have a $40 billion trade surplus with our country. There is nothing new about the fact that it is a totalitarian communist regime that is doing this, and our money feeds their military. There is nothing new about the fact that they charge us 20 to 40 percent on our products that we try to sell there, while we only charge them, because of the Most-Favored-Nation Status agreement, about 2 percent on their products that they sell here. What is new tonight is that we can have a chance to really address that, not just spend a couple more million dollars finding out what we already know, that they are making things with slave labor, but to tell the Chinese that we will expect some basic level of fairness from them in return for having access to our markets, and we will expect you, China, to treat its people better if they want to have access to our markets.”