Byron Dorgan: “late this evening or perhaps tomorrow morning, there will be a vote in the U.S. House on something called the Central…”

“late this evening or perhaps tomorrow morning, there will be a vote in the U.S. House on something called the Central American Free Trade Agreement. I have come to the Senate floor to speak about trade issues, but I especially want to discuss the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which passed in the Senate by a very narrow margin. The estimate is that the votes do not exist to pass this agreement it in the House. Lord knows how many bridges and highways have been promised in the last 48 hours, and it may very well be, at midnight tonight, magically the votes sufficient to pass this trade agreement will appear and we will have miles of highways and all kinds of bright bridges built in this country in order to persuade wavering House Members to vote for this awful trade agreement. It will be one more chapter in a boom of failed trade strategy and will mean more Americans will lose their jobs. Incidentally, there are some people today from the textile area of this country saying there will be some changes in CAFTA to protect the textile industry, which presumably would require some other legislation to be passed to implement these changes. Let me just say to anybody who thinks there are going to be any changes to this, there will be nothing coming through this Senate that will not be slowed down to the nth degree, and we will try in every way possible to block it.…”