Byron Dorgan: “my colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley, has offered a second-degree amendment to the amendment I have pending dealing…”

“my colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley, has offered a second-degree amendment to the amendment I have pending dealing with our trade laws. This amendment is just fine, as far as I am concerned. I hope everyone will support it. It restates what is already in the underlying bill. It reminds me of those days when, as a young boy, I used to buy magic kits and they would have vanishing ink. You would write it and then you wouldn't see it. There was nothing there. So we have these vanishing ink amendments that mean nothing, say nothing, do nothing. I am for it. We apparently will have an opportunity to vote on the Grassley amendment. I hope we will have side-by-side opportunities to vote on the Grassley amendment that does nothing, and then an amendment that does something, something that stands up for the economic interests of the American people. This is probably one of the only institutions in the entire world in which failure is deemed a success, and the more failure, the more we ought to do of it, according to the philosophy of some here in the Senate. This chart shows our trade deficits, the red ink. This is the record trade deficit of last year, and it is going to be higher now. This is a description of how much we are buying from abroad more than we are selling abroad and, therefore, a description of how many American jobs are being sent abroad. That is what it means.…”