The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“WASTEFUL SPENDING” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the Senate section on pages S5974-S5975 on Sept. 22, 2016.
The Department includes the Census Bureau, which is used to determine many factors about American life. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, said the Department is involved in misguided foreign trade policies and is home to many unneeded programs.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WASTEFUL SPENDING
Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I have put this poster up for Waste of the Week to address waste, fraud or abuse of taxpayers' hard-earned dollars, and this is week 51.
Today I am here to draw attention to the $2.3 billion owed to the United States from uncollected anti-dumping and countervailing duties. These are nations that have violated our trade laws, that signed up through trade laws or trade agreements, and then violated those--or companies from those countries that have violated those. There are laws that prohibit that and enforce that, and this is what it ought to be.
Let me say at the outset here that I do support international trade. It bolsters our economy; the statistics show that. It creates new opportunities for American businesses overseas, and it enhances America's security and global roles.
Trade raises economic prosperity; it has been a proven fact. Just take my State of Indiana. In recent years, Indiana has exported over
$34 billion in goods and services. Hoosier manufacturers export automobiles, auto parts, industrial machinery, medical devices, and much more. Indiana is a national leader in pharmaceutical and agricultural exports. In 2014, our State had the highest share of manufacturing employment per capita and the highest manufacturing income share relevant to the total income of any State in our country.
According to statistics, more than one in four--actually one in five--jobs in Indiana are due to our ability to export overseas. That has a significant impact on our economy here in Indiana. It is vital for our State to have strong trade laws that prevent other countries from engaging in unfair trade so that Hoosier companies can compete with them on a level playing field.
Having said that, I support international trade for all of the benefits to my State and to our country. I also strongly support the use of our trade laws to protect American companies against dumped or subsidized imports from foreign countries, China in particular.
Under Federal law, anti-dumping duties are special fees that are placed on products shipped to the United States at unfairly low prices. Sometimes this occurs when a foreign manufacturer sells a product in the United States for less than it cost to even make that profit. They are not even trying to regain their costs. They want our market share, so they dump products into the United States that undercut our American-made goods. I will not stand for that. I will not support that.
Some who support trade laws say that we shouldn't be enforcing these, that it will ultimately work itself out. I don't believe that. The law is the law. The agreements are the agreements. They need to be enforced. Countervailing duties are fees placed on products imported into the United States that are made in countries where the foreign government unfairly subsidizes the product to lower their sale price.
We are a free enterprise system here in America. Yes, there have been some subsidies, and we should not be a violator of that in terms of unfairly breaking the laws, and we generally are not in that situation. But many countries, we have found and proven through a process, a judicial process, have unfairly subsidized their products, and we need to impose the fees and penalties against these countries and these companies.
Both anti-dumping and countervailing duties are how we fight the predatory practices of foreign nations that unfairly hurt American manufacturers by making American-made products more expensive than a foreign competitor's product. In order to level the playing field for American companies and their workers, the U.S. Department of Commerce calculates the duties that should be placed on the imported product to make up for these predatory trade practices. Once Congress calculates the money owed to the United States, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency--CBP, which oversees all imports into the United States--is responsible for collecting these fees that are imposed.
Even though CBP is legally directed to collect all of these fees, recently the Government Accountability Office discovered that from the years 2001 to 2014, the CBP failed to collect about $2.3 billion in anti-dumping and countervailing duties. There are a number of reasons CBP has trouble collecting these fees, but one key reason the Government Accountability Office highlighted is that CBP simply does not assess the fees once the item is initially imported or once Commerce determines how much is owed. Basically, they are just behind the curve. So the agency that is responsible for collecting these fees simply is not doing its job successfully enough. CBP is supposed to collect the fees within the first 6 months of entry of the product or assessment, but in its accountability process, the GAO found that of the 41,000 uncollected bills--41,000 uncollected bills--the median age of the bills was 4.5 years, and they were supposed to do it in the first 6 months. Clearly, we have some dysfunction here. Clearly, we have some waste that needs to be corrected so that we can enforce these trade laws. Otherwise, we are sending a signal: Go ahead and do it. Chances are we will get away with it. Their assessment system is not functional. We have a good chance of avoiding the fee altogether.
That is the signal which is being sent out to countries and manufacturers all around the world that are dumping or unfairly subsidizing their products and making our products--our competition less competitive.
As I said, GAO has found that out of the 41,000 uncollected bills, the median age is 4.5 years. We need to get them back to the 6-month standard.
Additionally, we have learned that nearly 1,000 of those uncollected bills were between 10 years and 13 years old. That is simply not acceptable. It is a dysfunction of government. It is a dysfunction of the bureaucratic processes we have to deal with in Washington. If it were somebody else's money, maybe we could make an excuse for this dysfunction, but this is taxpayer money. This money is from the hard-
earned money each family takes home at the end of the week to pay the bills, to pay the mortgage, to save money for college. It is unacceptable to have this happening in Washington, DC, where this waste, fraud, and abuse continue to ramp up on our calculator.
American manufacturers work tirelessly to compete on a global market and sometimes against those who don't even play by the rules. Those who don't play by the rules have to have the rules enforced. So enforcement of our trade laws through the assessment of anti-dumping and countervailing duties is essential to ensure a level playing field for American workers and to show that predatory practices will not be tolerated. That is one reason I supported bipartisan legislation that was enacted earlier this year that would give the Customs and Border Patrol people the tools necessary to better enforce our trade laws, such as requiring CBP to better track which foreign companies may be less likely to pay fees owed to the United States.
Fortunately, CBP has agreed with the GAO's recommendations. Now that Congress has also provided the Customs and Border Patrol people with the tools to implement and enforce these recommendations, I am hopeful--but also watchful--that CBP will improve its track record in the near future.
We have a responsibility not only to sort out waste of taxpayers' dollars or misuse of taxpayers' dollars, we have a responsibility to try to correct the errors, to give the tools to the agencies to do their job as we have ordered them to do and then to oversee and make sure. It is one thing that the job is done. It is one thing to come to the floor and identify a problem. It is another thing to come down here with my colleagues and offer a solution. It is another thing to follow up and oversee that solution and see what we can do to make sure this doesn't happen again. We are far too short on oversight and far too long on rhetoric.
With that, I am adding $2.3 billion for uncollected anti-dumping and countervailing duties, bringing our taxpayer price tag to over $328-
plus billion of waste, fraud, and abuse. Think what we could do with that $328 billion--help our defense, help the National Institutes of Health produce lifesaving new medical techniques or therapies, pave some roads, pay for essential functions of the Federal Government, or even better, not have to take this money from the taxpayers and simply throw it away.
Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
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