Byron Dorgan: “this morning about 8:30 the administration released the information with respect to the 2005 trade deficit that our…”

“this morning about 8:30 the administration released the information with respect to the 2005 trade deficit that our country has experienced. The trade deficit for all of 2005 was described this morning as $728 billion. That means about $2 billion a day every day, 7 days a week. That is $2 billion a day more in imports from other countries into our country's marketplace than we are exporting to them, and it relates to the lost jobs that are such a problem in our country. When you import products from abroad, twice as much as you are able to export to other countries, you are in effect exporting America's jobs. The chart I show now shows the number with China alone. Almost one- third of the trade deficit is with China. We can see what has happened with China from 1996 to 2005. The trade deficit has gone up, up, way up every single year. It is out of control. This trade deficit is reflective of, once again, a massive number of American jobs being shipped to China. Then they produce products and ship the products back to our country. It weakens our country. It means we lose jobs. We lose economic strength, especially in the middle class. It is a crisis we must address. There is no social program as important as a good job that pays well in this country. We will debate social programs now for weeks and weeks because the President this past Monday sent us his budget for the next year. We will debate about the need for social programs.…”