Political Quotes

“This Customs bill fails totally to address a custom that is the custom of the USTR: saying one thing and doing another. Were it possible to legislate trust, to legislate candor, to legislate fidelity to public duty, I would be the most enthusiastic supporter this bill could have. Unfortunately, this proposal represents only a very thin, see-through window dressing for a runaway bureaucracy that is pursuing its own multinational corporate agenda and ignoring the public interest. The USTR, in its history, has never successfully challenged an environmental abuse. Though the USTR has been charged since February 2009 with preventing trade in illegal logging and in the destruction of Peruvian rain forests, the Environmental Investigation Agency recently reported: ``Illegal logging in Peru and the associated trade remains a serious and unabated problem.'' There has been a ``complete failure to enforce these obligations . . .'' One such obligation is a very simple audit to demonstrate whether logs are being harvested legally or illegally. I have specifically asked the USTR repeatedly to just produce the audit so we can see, and they have refused to provide that documentation or to admit that their enforcement has totally failed to do that simple matter. Meanwhile, coffins with the names of brave Peruvian inspectors are being dragged through the streets.…”