James Traficant: “I have a little Buy American amendment, and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Rangel], he said we really do not need to…”

“I have a little Buy American amendment, and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Rangel], he said we really do not need to buy American kids in this, but I want to explain it. The Traficant amendment has been passed on to many things, and it says simply, it is a sense of Congress that when funds are expended pursuant to the passage of these acts and these laws, that when they expend that money, that the Congress notifies them, wherever possible, to try to buy American-made products. It does not tie their hands. And they should give us a report at the end of the year as to how much was foreign-made so we can get some computerization on what is our procurement around here. I want to say this to the Congress. We are at this point, the delegation from Massachusetts, looking into the fact that our currency, the paper that our currency is printed on, will be made in Great Britain. And the Crane Co. of Massachusetts, who has produced the paper that our currency has been printed on, will come to us from overseas. We have military troops in Chinese boots. We have gotten to the point where we have lost sight of our procurement. I once passed an amendment on a defense bill, I would say to the gentlewoman from Ohio, that if a foreign country does not allow American companies to bid, they should not be allowed to bid on our defense contracts. And both sides of the aisle fought it and then they finally passed it.”