Economy & Budget

American and Panamanian trade negotiators reached a deal on sugar access in a Panama-U.S. trade agreement late on Monday night.

The deal allows for 7,000 metric tons of additional duty free access to the U.S. sugar market and grants duty free access for U.S. sugar shipments into Panama—a market that has historically been closed.

Even though the U.S. sugar market is already oversupplied with unneeded imports, initial reaction within the U.S. sugar industry to this trade deal has been positive.

That’s because U.S. trade negotiators worked hard to turn unreasonable Panamanian requests into a fair sugar agreement.  7,000 tons is a manageable amount and will not send shockwaves through our market like the lopsided deals with Mexico and Central America in the past. Read more...

I am honored to chair the Budget Committee, but realistic. This will be a daunting task, a huge challenge. The unified deficit was $248 billion last year. Our objective is to balance the budget within a reasonable time; but with spending for Iraq and Afghanistan running well over $100 billion this fiscal year, it will not be easy.

I was one of four budget principals in Congress who worked out the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which put the budget in the black for the first time in thirty years. In the year 2000, just before President Bush took office, the budget ran a surplus of $236 billion. That surplus was gone, wiped out, within two years, and the budget has been stuck in deficit ever since.

My aim is to put the budget on track, and back to balance within a reasonable time, but also to balance priorities within the budget. In the Balanced Budget Act, we protected Medicare and Medicaid, expanded student aid, and created the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

In the next Congress, we will work to wipe out the deficit; but while we will have to cut some spending, we will carry forward our fight for the good programs that millions of Americans depend on.

With the baby boomers’ retirement fast approaching, these past several years would have been a good time for federal policymakers to put the government’s fiscal house in order by reducing the national debt.  Instead, they expanded it.
At the end of fiscal year 2006, the national debt stood at roughly $4.8 trillion.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that $2.3 trillion, or nearly half of the debt, was the result of tax cuts and spending increases approved by Congress and the Administration since January 2001.

Sad to say, but the nation would be in much better shape today if Congress had left the budget on automatic pilot for the past six years.

Where did that $2.3 trillion go?  A bit over half of it went to tax cuts, and another third went to increased spending for defense, homeland security, and international affairs (primarily the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), according to CBO data.  Only 6 percent of the $2.3 trillion represents increases in domestic discretionary programs, the part of the budget some have mistakenly claimed is “exploding.

The Commerce Department announced that the U.S. trade deficit fell sharply in October. I normally would welcome this as good news – but a closer look reveals a different story.

The main reason for the apparent drop in the U.S. trade deficit is that our imports from OPEC were significantly less expensive in October – and one can hardly expect that to be a long-term trend. Meanwhile, our trade deficit with both China and Japan reached new records in that month. The China deficit alone reached $24.3 billion in just one month – and the Chinese shipped us six times as much merchandise as they purchased from us. Our merchandise trade deficit for the year is set to reach a new record, well above $800 billion.

These are the key deficit numbers – the ones that translate into lost U.S. jobs and a declining standard of living, as our manufacturing base continues to be hollowed out. Read more...

The Democratic majority in the 110th Congress must lead our country to balanced trade accounts. We must erase the swelling U.S. trade deficit that erodes our economy, our good jobs, and our national security while the Bush administration watches idly. We must confront the staggering trade imbalance with China, Japan, the Middle East, and so many others. As the trade deficit rises, the value of the dollar falls, and our dependence on foreign creditors increases. Democrats must reclaim our economy for the American people.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration clings to a failed policy. The trade deficit has doubled since George W. Bush took office. The deficit was $375 billion in 2000 and will almost certainly exceed $750 billion this year. Though the President says America must break our "addiction to imported petroleum," under his Presidency America is importing one billion more barrels of oil per year.

As companies lay off workers and move abroad, and as foreign firms buy American assets, the trade deficit has ballooned to $773 billion from November 2005 to the most recently released numbers from October 2006. China's share is even more bloated: a $24.4 billion trade gap for the month of October alone. This year's trade deficit will be the largest in U.S. history. Read more...

Last night at about 9:30PM, the Senate passed the final version of the Export-Import Bank Reauthorization bill (S. 3938), and sent it to the President's desk for his signature. After nearly two years of oversight by the House Small Business Committee, this has been a long day in coming. I have been working on getting more small businesses engaged in the international marketplace ever since I was first elected to Congress in 1992 and this bill contains the most far-reaching reforms I have ever seen in export finance for small businesses during my tenure.

I am excited about the prospects for small business exporters in this bill. This bill might be more appropriately titled, "The Small Business Export Finance Enhancement Act of 2006." It will certainly give Ex-Im the tools necessary to meet and exceed the 20 percent goal for small business that Congress set as a new target during the last reauthorization bill in 2002. Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a study, which I requested, that showed the Ex-Im Bank has consistently missed its statutory 20 percent set aside mandate for small business since Congress increased the mandate in 2002. Read more...

Throughout the last decade, I have watched as trade transformed communities in Texas from areas of marginal business activity to some of the most rapidly developing counties in the nation. My hometown of Laredo now serves as the largest inland port in North America and takes in 60% of all North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) traffic. But NAFTA and our current trade agreements are not enough. If we want to remain competitive and continue to improve Americans' lives, we must keep on pushing for deeper trade liberalization. Thomas Friedman's recent writing on keeping America competitive really strikes a chord with me. He wrote, "If globalization were a sport, it would be a 100-meter dash, over and over and over. And no matter how many times you win, you have to race again the next day."

Racing and winning means not only creating jobs here at home but also ensuring that American consumers have access to affordable imports. With this in mind, the Congress must quickly renew key trade preferences for our allies in the developing world. In this period of post-election bipartisan cooperation, I believe that the renewal of trade preferences is something members of Congress from both sides of the aisle can agree on. As the Washington Post editorialized yesterday morning. "It shouldn't matter whether you're a conservative or liberal, for globalization or against: Some trade bills are so obviously beneficial and unobjectionable that there's no excuse for letting them languish."

The expiration of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) and the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA) on December 31 makes action particularly urgent. While completed free trade agreements with Peru and Colombia and future negotiations with Ecuador and Bolivia are considered, we must act quickly in extending preferences to all four countries. The failure to renew these preferences would not only create economic chaos in Latin America but also would raise prices for U.S. consumers and hurt U.S. companies working in these countries. In the increasingly globalized world in which we live, damage to U.S. companies operating abroad will have repercussions on our own workers here at home. Read more...

While naysayers have been predicting economic gloom and doom, the market has continued to forge ahead. Today's news that the economy grew at a faster-than-expected rate in the third quarter proves the staying power of the economy's health.

While Republicans have worked tirelessly to employ pro-growth initiatives, it remains to be seen how the economy will respond to Democratic measures. I urge Democrat leaders to continue responsible economic policies. Extend the tax cuts. Eliminate the death tax. I stand ready to work with you for the good of the American worker.

This past Saturday, I spoke to the nation in the Democrats' weekly radio address and discussed three pledges that Democrats are making to the country:

1.) We will and must change the way things are done in Washington;
2.) We will work with the President and our Republican colleagues in Congress to forge a new direction in Iraq; and
3.) We will address the concerns and issues that affect the lives of working families.

Let me elaborate a bit more on those pledges. First, Washington has to change the way it does business. Democrats seek to restore civility and integrity to our legislative process, and transparency and accountability to our government. We will reach across the aisle and seek bipartisan consensus whenever possible and pass legislation that ensures ethics and lobbying reform.

Second, the strategy in Iraq is not working. In the days ahead, the Iraqis must make the tough decisions and accept responsibility for their future. Read more...

At this time of year, I like to recall the famous Norman Rockwell painting, “Freedom from Want,