Posted on 05/08/2007 11:06:59 AM PDT by pissant
IT'S CALLED PORKBUSTING, NOT GRIDLOCK (House of Representatives - April 02, 1993)
Mr . HUNTER . Mr. Speaker, I rise to answer the gentleman from California [Mr. Fazio] a member of the Democrat leadership who just took this well to criticize Republicans for standing firm against pork barrel spending.
This great economic stimulus package that you have touted includes bike paths in Puerto Rico, cemeteries, and fish atlases. It is pure pork, and the Republicans who are fighting this are porkbusters.
Our duty to the American people as Republicans is to stand firm against shams, and the Democrat economic package is a sham.
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WE NEED A 100-PERCENT FAT-FREE CRIME BILL (House of Representatives - August 20, 1994
Mr . HUNTER . Mr. Speaker, for our constituents who want a 100-percent fat-free crime bill a number of Democrats and Republicans have been working, and we have put together a crime bill that has more policemen, more prisons and jails, and more Border Patrol, and is $7 billion less than the porked-up crime bill that the conference is presently working on. So, if we want to join up and pass a crime bill that does something about crime and also reforms habeas corpus, reforms the exclusionary rule, and does something for the officers on the street, vote for the Brewster-Hunter bipartisan, 100-percent fat-free crime bill.
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THE NORTH AMERICAN FREE-TRADE AGREEMENT (House of Representatives - October 06, 1993)
Mr . HUNTER . Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for being fair and allowing some of us smart-thinking, anti-NAFTA Members of the House to speak.
Mr. DREIER. I have always had very high regard for my friend's intelligence, with the exception of this issue.
Mr . HUNTER . Madam Speaker, let me just ask my friend a question.
He just said the reason the companies move, many of them move to Mexico, is so they can serve the Mexican market. They could not do that otherwise.
We had a major story in the Washington Post today about the defense contractors who are moving to Mexico. And interestingly, the defense contractors, who are building high-tech, not low-tech stuff, but high-tech stuff in Mexico, in Tijuana, just south of my district, the defense contractors, who are moving to Mexico are not selling to Mexicans. They are shipping back to the good old U.S. taxpayer who pays their cost.
Does the gentleman have a reason for their moving to Mexico?
Mr. DREIER. Obviously, what I said was, of the United States businesses that move to Mexico, 70 percent of the business that they do is selling to the Mexican consumers. I did not say in every instance.
But I would respond to my friend by saying, will implementation of a North American Free-Trade Agreement have an effect one way or another on the decision that is made? Will the defeat of the North American Free-Trade Agreement, basically maintaining the status quo, what we have today, prevent those businesses in the defense industry from moving to Mexico?
Mr . HUNTER . My answer to the gentleman is, no. It will not prevent them from moving to Mexico, because we need legislation to keep them from moving to Mexico.
In my estimation, a defense industry that is supported by American taxpayers should support taxpayers.
Mr. DREIER. That is a perfect argument now for perpetuating NAFTA. I agree that we should not have U.S. defense contractors operating in countries throughout the world and proceeding with this kind of work. It seems to me that what we should be doing is, we should be enhancing opportunities for businesses that are here in the United States to have a chance to export into Mexico.
Mr . HUNTER . Let me answer my friend as to what this really shows, the fact that high-tech defense companies are moving to Mexico.
It shows that Mexican workers, with good training and with good equipment, are capable of doing high-tech jobs.
Let me just address, maybe not the gentleman's material, Mr. Clinton, President Clinton's material that has come over to my office and, presumably, every office on the Hill. His material says, and I am paraphrasing, are we going to lose high-tech jobs? Are we going to lose valuable jobs? The answer is no. We are not going to lose valuable jobs, because Mexican workers are not as productive as Americans workers.
My point is that when they are well-trained, and they are well-trained now, with 200,000 vocational graduates a year, and when they have good equipment, they are as productive as American workers. And they will work. The average worker in Tijuana, just south of my district, works about 4 hours to be able to buy 1 pound of meat. They will work for about $1.50 to $2.38 an hour, fully loaded wages.
Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, if I could respond, I would simply say, congratulations. I look forward to having the Mexican worker as productive as the American worker.
But the fact of the matter is, the decision that was made by General Motors and the United Auto Workers compact, that they had to move the Chevy Cavalier plant from Mexico back to Michigan, was done for one very simple and basic reason: a determination that the United States auto worker was far more productive than the auto worker in Mexico and the fact that the United States business and the auto industry will be able to have a chance, under the North American Free-Trade Agreement, to export into Mexico.
I would like to say to my friend, I want to continue this exchange. We have two Members on the other side of the aisle who have been waiting patiently.
Mr . HUNTER . Madam Speaker, let me just shoot down what the gentleman said about automobiles and production moving back to this country. Let me shoot it right down.
The big three automakers have got $4 billion in planned expansion in Mexico. Mexico's own prognostication of auto production is moving up from 250,000 units made in Mexico, like the Ford Hermosillo plant, exported back to America, 250,000 units a year to 700,000 units a year by the year 2000. They are not doing that because they think they can make them cheaper in the United States
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[FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES, MAY 22, 1996]
Clinton Dodges Suit, Says He's in Military
CRITICS FUME AT COMMANDER IN CHIEF
(BY BRIAN BLOMQUIST)
President Clinton has provoked a furor by asserting in legal papers that as commander in chief he is in the military and a sexual-harassment lawsuit against him must be postponed until his active duty is completed.
The chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee is gathering signatures from other congressmen to send a letter to Mr. Clinton criticizing his latest defense in the lawsuit brought by former Arkansas employee Paula Corbin Jones.
In papers filed a week ago, Mr. Clinton seeks to defer the lawsuit under the Soldiers' and Sailors' Relief Act of 1940, which grants automatic delays in lawsuits against military personnel until their active duty is over.
Mr. Clinton maneuvered to avoid military service in 1969, during the Vietnam War.
A petition filed May 15 says, `President Clinton here thus seeks relief similar to that which he may be entitled as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and which is routinely available to service members under his command.'
Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from California.
Mr . HUNTER . If the gentleman will yield, I appreciate him yielding. This is one of those things where even though the gentleman who is in the White House is of another party, you hope when you read a story like that, that it is not true, that he has not tried to do this, because the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act was passed for one reason, and that was because GI's, like Audie Murphy, were going over to foreign theaters and were expected to go because we were on the verge, we were getting into World War II, and we knew people would be leaving for 1, 2, 3, 4 years at a time. Some of them might never come back.
The last thing that you wanted for a veteran who was overseas fighting in Europe or later on in Asia or in other places was to have a lawsuit filed against him in American courts while he was off fighting in the jungle someplace, and since he was unaware of it, have that lawsuit basically turn into a judgment for lack of response from the soldier or sailor who did not even know it was being filed, and have that judgment end up taking away his farm or his house or something else.
It was meant to give relief to America's fighting men who were overseas fighting for their country, and women, I might add. So people like the women who were ferrying planes for Jackie Cochran's WASPS in World War II, the women who took planes back and forth to Great Britain, had the same type of relief.
So for a sitting President of the United States, who is surrounded by lawyers, who never stepped a foot overseas during the conflict in which he said he loathed the military, for him to cloak himself in an act that was designed to keep basic American soldiers from losing their farm while they were off fighting and were not available to answer a court summons, is absolutely a misuse of this act.
Here is a President who has got wall-to-wall lawyers. My gosh, I am sure the American Trial Lawyers will lend him a couple, since he saved their back on a number of occasions. I just hope, there are some times you say `I do not care if he is Democrat or Republican. I just hope he did not do that.' I hope this is a farce, that this is not true, that somebody pulled an April Fool's joke on this reporter.
Amen Deb. Unfortunately, I see Huckabee and Paul staying in for some time.
Me too. He suffers no fools. And he’s no Rick Lazio metrosexual.
What a perfect analogy! :-)
Blast from Hunter’s past!
Ping!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1684452/posts
Is Congress spending your money in secret? [EARMARKS]
Amazing, isn’t it? *shudder*
There is a nice database that article is linked to. You can look up the monies by state.
Night!
Thanks. G’night Cal.
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