22 April 1999
Source: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html

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[Congressional Record: April 21, 1999 (House)]
[Page H2229-H2230]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr21ap99-98]


    CALLING FOR SIGNIFICANT REFORMS IN AMERICA'S SANCTIONS POLICIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from California (Mr. Dooley) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOOLEY of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to be an advocate
for the United States making significant reforms in our sanctions
policy. It is becoming increasingly apparent that an increasing share
of our gross domestic product and indeed the growth of our economy is
becoming related to trade.
  It is obvious, I think, too, to most Americans when we look at the
fact that only 4 percent of the world's population live inside our
borders, with 96 percent living outside our borders, that this country
has to adopt policies to ensure that we will have the greatest access
to these markets, because that is where the interests of increased job
opportunities that are so important to the working men and women of
this country as well as the market opportunities for the businesses
lie.
  I have beside me here a chart which really demonstrates one of the
reasons and makes one of the most compelling arguments for sanctions
reform. We currently impose some form of sanctions on over 75
countries. The most distressing aspect of this is the fact that it is
costing our economy up to $15 to $20 billion a year in lost imports,
and that means we have $200,000 fewer jobs, high-paying jobs in this
country because of the sanctions we have imposed.
  I have introduced a piece of legislation with my colleague, the
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Crane). It is a bipartisan piece of
legislation that is asking us to adopt a new policy to ensure that we
will use sanctions only as a last resort.
  It does not say that Congress and this country cannot impose
unilateral economic sanctions, but it does require that before we do so
we have to do an analysis and make sure that when we impose a sanction,
that it will indeed achieve the objective of mitigation of the behavior
of a country which we are targeting.
  It also goes further, to say to Members of Congress that we need to
have a study to analyze what will be the cost to our economy, what will
be the cost in terms of jobs lost, what will be the cost to our economy
in terms of markets lost to U.S. companies by the imposition of that
sanction?
  I am confident that once Members of Congress have that information in
front of them, they are going to realize that the policy and the
utilization of unilateral economic sanctions is a policy that harms the
interests of the working men and women, as well as the businesses in
this country.
  A group of us who work closely with the New Democrat Coalition have
made

[[Page H2230]]

this one of our highest priorities, and we are also expanding our
effort to deal with some issues which are important to the technology
sector.
  It is clear when we look at the fact that the United States has
almost remained an island of prosperity and economic growth in the
midst of a world which is suffering from financial crisis, that in
large part that is due because of the fact that the United States has
the relative advantage internationally in the development of new
technology.
  Yet, we have some sanctions and some export restrictions in place
which jeopardize our opportunity to continue to have this advantage
internationally. It is time for us to relax some of our restrictions on
the export of technology, and particularly restrictions on encryption
technology.
  Unfortunately, we have a policy that restricts the sale of some of
our computers embedded with an encryption technology that is using a
technology that is over 10 years old. The fact that we have a policy in
place now that will preclude U.S. companies from marketing some of
their computers and other technology internationally because of our
restrictions on encryption, how ludicrous this is witnessed by the fact
that anyone in the world today can go to the Internet and download
encryption that is far more powerful than that we are imposing upon or
restricting our companies from selling that product overseas. That just
does not make sense any longer.
  We also have a policy in place in this country where we restrict the
speed of computers and microprocessors that we can export outside of
our borders. That might have made sense 10 years ago or even 5 years
ago, when we were worried about jeopardizing the national security of
this country by giving powerful computers and putting them in the hands
of some of the people who threaten world peace.
  But unfortunately, we have maintained an old policy that has not kept
pace with the advancements in technology. Back 20 years ago when we had
our Cray supercomputers, that were certainly so powerful and so
important that we needed to have responsible restrictions on them,
today we have reached the point where there is going to be a computer
sold today, or in this next 6 months, with a chip developed by Intel
which will have the capacity to perform the number of operations per
second, and that chip alone will exceed the restrictions we have in
place.
  It is time for us to make some responsible reforms in encryption
policy, our restrictions on computer technology, and the overall reform
of our sanctions policy.

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