Frank Wolf: “I wanted to do this early in the session, because I wanted Members, although the chamber is empty, there are a few…”

“I wanted to do this early in the session, because I wanted Members, although the chamber is empty, there are a few Members here, hopefully, Members will read this, and I will send this to the administration, but the body ought to know, the Membership ought to know that this is not cheap grace, that a vote on MFN, if it comes up, and quite frankly, there has been so little progress. If the Clinton administration keeps its word, they may not even send it up. But this is not a cheap grace vote. This is a serious vote, because what we are doing is, we are voting to either punish or condemn or support and stand with people like this. We have had similar cases. As the gentleman knows, the Congress very proudly, several years ago, working with Congressman Smith and Congressman Tony Hall, we took away MFN from Ceausescu. Ceausescu was a brutal dictatorship. People said, if you take it away, it is going to hurt people. If I would go to Romania, the Romanian people would say, take it away, take it away. We took MFN. We did not give MFN to the Soviet Union, because we allowed those who wanted to emigrate to Israel and places like that. We stood with those who were being persecuted. I, for one, do not want 20 years from now my kids to say, Dad, this debate was going on and what did you do. I want people to know there are lives involved. So it is not a free vote. In closing, my last two comments, I hope that the Chinese change.”