Protectionism Happens to Be Congress's Job - Sen. Ernest Hollings

[groovedaddy]

Protectionism Happens to Be Congress's Job

By Sen. Ernest F. Hollings
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page B03

Free trade is like world peace -- you can't get there by whining about it. You must be willing to fight for it. And the entity to fight for free trade is the U.S. Congress.

Instead, Congress -- whose members are shouting "fair trade" and "level the playing field" -- is the very group tilting the playing field when it comes to trade.

By piling items onto the cost of doing business here, Congress has helped end the positive trade balance that the United States ran right up until the early 1980s. Over the past 40 years, the minimum wage went up, the Environmental Protection Agency was established, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was set up. Lawmakers added the Equal Pay Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Employment Retirement Income Security Act. Then came the sharp increase in payroll taxes for Social Security in 1983, measures requiring plant closing notice and parental leave, and the Americans With Disabilities Act. Health costs increased, too, making it $500 a car cheaper in health costs alone for General Motors to make Pontiacs in Canada. All this helped give us a trade deficit that hit a record $43.1 billion in January alone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9668-2004Mar19.html

[brokensymmetry]

1. Free trade?

I'll take jobs for Americans, thank you very much. There are fellow DUers - as well as who knows how many people in the general population - who have been out of work for YEARS.

It is well past time for Congress to concern themselves with what is best for America's working men and women.

[groovedaddy]

2. I hope you read the entire piece because

I thought Hollings was being a proponent of Free Trade, which I'm not and evidently, neither is he!

[Desperadoe]

3. Senator Hollings

can't possibly come from the same state as Strom Thurmond.

That article has more common sense than anything that I have read here in months about the economy.

This is precisely what we will do after Bush and the Pukes bankrupt this nation and we are left to pick up the pieces. So sad that no one listens to smart old men.