Walter B. Jones: “we have coming before us pretty soon an issue called CAFTA, the Central America Free Trade Agreement. I want to start my…”

“we have coming before us pretty soon an issue called CAFTA, the Central America Free Trade Agreement. I want to start my comments, Ross Perot, when he was a candidate for the Presidency on October 19, 1992 at a Presidential debate said, ``You implement that the NAFTA, the Mexican trade agreement where they pay people a dollar an hour, have no health care, no retirement, no pollution controls, and you are going to hear a giant sucking sound of jobs being pulled out of this country right at a time when we need the tax base to pay the debt.'' Mr. Speaker, Mr. Perot was exactly right. We know Ross Perot as a successful businessman and a man who loves and cares about America. Let me tell Members what happened since December 1993 when NAFTA became the law of the land. Before NAFTA, we ran a trade surplus with Mexico. Now the U.S. runs a $45 billion annual trade deficit with Mexico; from a trade surplus to a trade deficit. In addition, my home State of North Carolina since NAFTA became the law of the land has lost over 200,000 manufacturing jobs. The United States has lost over 2.5 million manufacturing jobs. Let me give some facts about illegal aliens coming from Mexico across the border. Prior to NAFTA, the average was 2 million. Since NAFTA, it is better than 7.5 million. CAFTA will continue these trends. Eighty-five percent of the language in CAFTA is identical to the language in NAFTA. Let me give another example of what has happened to American jobs.…”