Legislative History of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 P.L. 100-418 V. 23

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23 Legislative History of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 P.L. 100-418 [i] (1988)

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OMNIBUS TRADE AND COMPETITIVENESS ACT OF 1988

P.L. 100-418
102 Stat. 1107
August 23, 1988

The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 is one of
the largest and widest-ranging pieces of legislation the U.S. Congress
has enacted. The bill that was signed by President Reagan on August
23 of 1988 contained legislative proposals initiated by nearly all of the
committees in both the House and Senate. In the 99th Congress, several
legislative initiatives relating to U.S. and foreign trade were combined into
a single omnibus bill, H.R. 4800, with the core of the bill being the
proposals of the House Committee on Ways and Means contained in H.R.
4750. H.R. 4800 passed the House in 1986 but was not considered in
the Senate. In 1987, the first session of the 100th Congress, the bill was
reintroduced as H.R. 3. The bill was then referred to the several
committees having jurisdiction over its individual titles. These committees
then reported out the bill in the form that was then debated on the House
floor. The committees of the Senate in the 100th Congress each reported
their own trade legislation. These bills were combined around the Senate
Finance Committee's trade bill, S. 490, to form S. 1420, very much in the
same manner that H.R. 4800 was fashioned in the previous Congress.
After passage in the House, H.R. 3 was amended on the Senate floor to
contain the text of S. 1420, as amended previously during the long Senate
debate. The House and Senate then went into conference to resolve the
two versions of H.R. 3. After the version of H.R. 3 that was agreed to in
conference was vetoed by President Reagan over his objections to plant
closing legislation and provisions concerning Alaskan oil, the House
reintroduced H.R. 3, minus the language to which the President had
objected, as H.R. 4848, which quickly passed the House and Senate and
was signed by the President.
In order to assist research, the documents have been grouped by
document type (bill, report, hearing, etc.), within that group they have
been arranged by committee and within committee by chronological order.
The exceptions to this are the omnibus bills, the conference report to H.R.
3, and the congressional debate--these are all items that fall outside the
range of committee consideration--and many bills that are related to the
legislative history but were not reported by the committee, as these bills
were far to numerous to include among the legislative proposals adopted
by the original committees. For those who are intimidated by the
incredible size of this legislative history, I offer the following advice for