Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Speaker, I share the frustration of the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Jefferson) on the procedures that are being used here; and I do not speak to the procedures, but I am going to vote to uphold the rule of law and support the resolution.

We have laws that are WTO-consistent. They are here to protect our country from illegally imported products. In December 2001, the International Trade Commission, which is a nonpartisan body, unanimously found that the domestic steel industry had been harmed by the flood of foreign steel imports into the U.S. market since 1998. They found that our country became the dumping ground for illegally imported subsidized steel. As a result, our domestic steel producers were damaged.

In October, Bethlehem Steel Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. We now have 33 steel companies in the United States which are in some form of bankruptcy. They are there not because they cannot produce cost-effective steel. They can compete if it was fair competition, but we do not have fair competition because we have excess capacity in the world in producing steel.

The United States made it a policy to reduce its capacity in the last decade. We cannot produce enough steel to meet our domestic needs. We need to import steel. We have done what was necessary to restructure our steel industry on capacity. But it is our trading partners that still have the excess capacity that is causing U.S. steel companies to go in bankruptcy because of the dumped steel.

After we get rid of this resolution, we need to turn our attention to legacy costs because U.S. steel producers need help on the retiree costs if they are going to be able to compete on a fair, level playing field. I hope today's action will not be the last action in supporting the President. It is legacy protection for our steelworkers.