Let me say this: that some fifty years ago, Nov. 30, 1950 to be exact, I found myself a member of the Second Infantry Division, having fought from Pusan, entering in July, straight up through to North Korea, sitting on the Yalu river, I was twenty years old at the time, waiting to go home because we thought the war was over.  We had beaten back the North Koreans.  And while we were there and Gen. MacArthur was having his fight with President Truman, hoards of Chinese, not the lovely Chinese that the distinguished Majority Leader was talking about, but hoards of Communist Chinese, destroyed the entire 8th Army and we suffered 90 percent casualties.  

I don’t take Communism lightly, but that was fifty years ago, and now the guy that was shot and a high school dropout became a member of this distinguished body.   And now this United States is the most powerful country in the world - militarily and economically. And how did we get this way?  It’s because we do things better.  We’re better educated.  We’re more productive.  But in order for us to continue to prosper, we have to have economic growth.  We have to find new marketplaces.  And all of a sudden to my shock and surprise, with the exception of Cuba, Communism isn’t the barrier.  Instead we are involved in exchange engagement and finding those marketplaces. 

How can we afford to ignore over a billion people, knowing that if we ignore them, the Asians and the Europeans will not?  We come to the well here with an agreement where we’re breaking down the barriers in China.  Not in the United States, they’ve been down.  This gives us an opportunity to go into those markets, and I’ve been throughout the United States.  No one challenges me that farmers are begging to get into those markets.  Silicon Valley in California, Silicon Alley in New York, farmers, pharmacists, manufacturers, the banking industry, the insurance industry, asking us to allow us to get there, and show how good Americans can really be. 

And yet we say we would like to do that but we have deep-seated concerns about the way China treats its people.  Well, we don’t want to ignore those concerns.  That’s why we have Mr. Levin and Mr. Bereuter’s proposal.  We lock into place a commission of oversight that, if this fails, we won’t have.  I ask those people that have this compassionate concern for their new found Communist friends in China, that what if these Chinese do everything that we hate for them to do, what do we do when the annual review comes up next year if NTR is not permanent.  Don’t you understand that we would be the bad guys for putting in an impediment to them getting in the World Trade Organization, but they will get in anyway?  We will have no way but barking at the moon to complain about the behavior that we dislike. 

But I tell you this, we can not forget as Americans that we have blemishes on this human rights issue.   We have descendants of slaves that sit in this body.  We have people here as members of Congress that fifty years ago couldn’t eat in certain restaurants.  We have people who live in the U.S. without education, without hope, without running water.  And I tell you this, I have not leaned on one member in asking them to vote for this bill. I would not think that I am more of an American than they are.  But I wanna share with you that when people in certain districts go to sleep dreaming about human rights they’re not thinking of Shanghai.  They’re thinking about an opportunity in this great country.    

We're blessed.  Let’s break down these barriers. Let’s be able to go there to China. Let’s maintain an annual report, yes, but daily we will monitor the conduct, and let’s give America an opportunity to be all that she can be.   We’ll show ya. Cutting off communication did not work with that Communist Castro.  He’s outlived close to ten presidents.  Don’t let it happen in China.