Members of the U.S. House of Representatives returned to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a rare lame-duck session to cast their last votes of the 103rd Congress on a historic world trade accord that supporters predicted would pass.
Vice President Al Gore, not taking the expected victory for granted, made a morning stop at the Capitol, along with U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, to rally lawmakers and gauge support. The trade accord was widely expected to pass the House, but Gore was hesitant to predict the outcome."I'm optimistic because the vote counts are coming in in a way that tells us we're close to victory, but we're not there yet," he said. "We're presently on the way to winning the vote because we're winning the argument on GATT."
The vote on the trade bill to expand the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was expected to be along the lines of last year's House approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which passed, 234-200.
After meeting with Gore and Kantor, Rep. Sam Gibbons, D-Fla., acting chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and a proponent of GATT, confidently predicted victory: "This is a day for the American people to celebrate and for the free world to celebrate."
Approving the GATT bill in the House and sending to the Senate for final congressional approval is Gibbons' last goal before he relinquishes his committee chairmanship to Rep. Bill Archer, R-Texas, when Republicans - reaping the harvest of their election sweep - take control in Jan-u-ary.
The agreement enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support in the House from both Democratic and GOP leaders, including Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who is poised to become the first Republican speaker of the House in 40 years, and outgoing House Speaker Thomas Foley, D-Wash.
Foley, the most symbolic defeat in the 1994 election, scheduled his last news conference for Tuesday and even invited television cameras, breaking tradition.
The new trade deal reached under the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, signed by 124 nations, would reduce worldwide trade barriers by cutting tariffs some $750 billion over the next 10 years. It is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 1995.
The bill's prospects are not as clear in the Senate, which is to consider the legislation Thursday.
Opposition in the Senate is driven by concerns that the World Trade Organization, the body that would be created under GATT to adjudicate world trade disputes, would amount to a surrender of U.S. sovereignty to a foreign - and potentially hostile - tribunal of judges.
But Senate proponents insist that now, with the key backing of Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas, the agreement is ripe for passage.
In a related development, thousands demonstrated in Seoul, South Korea, to protest the GATT agreement, which would open the nation's rice market.