James Traficant: “One thing for sure, I am certainly not going to oppose the gentleman's bill or his efforts. I must disagree in one area.…”

“One thing for sure, I am certainly not going to oppose the gentleman's bill or his efforts. I must disagree in one area. I think the gentleman's bill will do an awful lot. It sets the tone of the way we should be looking at China, and perhaps the greatest national security threat in our history is looking at us, and we are financing it. Some of the young Members do not know this, but the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] does. Years ago I had language in a defense appropriation bill that Chairman Rostenkowski would not tolerate. He demanded the rule be left open, and it was, I say to the gentleman from Hawaii [Mr. Abercrombie]. When we came over to the floor, completely open, he says, I will not do waivers of points of order against this bill because I will strike the Traficant language. Listen to what the Traficant language was. It says if a foreign country denies American companies the right to bid on their government contracts, their companies domiciled therein, incorporated under their law, cannot bid on our defense contracts. That went really to the wire, did it not, because the first title of that appropriation bill was the Army, and I raised a point of order. The point of order was sustained because the authorization bill was not passed, and I struck every penny in it for the Army. The second title was the Air Force. They sustained the strike, and the Air Force was completely obliterated from the bill.”