Political Quotes

“one interesting thing that my friend, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis), said, people who are supporting these trade agreements said if we do these trade agreements, it is going to lift up living standards in Mexico and in China, and the Chinese will be freer and democracy will break out, and all of that. There is no evidence of that in China. In fact, it is every bit as oppressive and repressive a regime as it was 3 or 4 years ago, or 2 years ago when the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell) and I worked against giving China most favored nation trading privileges. I want to briefly tell a story in line of what the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis) told. About 4 years ago, when Fast Track was defeated in this body, and it has been defeated twice in the last 4 years, and will be again tomorrow, I went down to sort of look at how NAFTA worked. NAFTA had been in effect 4 or 5 years then. I wanted to get a picture of the future, and to put a human face on trade and on NAFTA, and on what we had to look forward to if we passed Fast Track. I went to a home of a husband and wife, and it was nothing; you could not describe it as anything else but a shack maybe 20 feet by 20 feet, with dirt floors, no running water, no electricity. The husband worked at General Electric, an American company, and the wife worked at General Electric. They each made 90 cents an hour.”