[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 52 (Wednesday, May 1, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3601-S3603]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRADE PROMOTION AUTHORITY

  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, to this point, I have not come over and 
spoken on the issue before us; which is trade promotion authority, and 
then all of the little cars that have been attached to this big, 
powerful, important engine. So while we are in the midst of doing these 
negotiations, I want to simply make a few points.
  Let me, first, say that I take a back seat to no Member of the Senate 
and to no one in public life in supporting trade. I am a free trader. I 
support trade. I think it is the most powerful engine for economic 
development in history. I would support a free trade policy worldwide. 
I am for trade promotion authority.
  When Bill Clinton was President, I said it was an outrage that we did 
not give him trade promotion authority. And I think it is an outrage 
that we have not yet given it to President Bush. I am very hopeful we 
are going to give it to him. In fact, I am confident we are going to 
give it to him. But I am a little bit concerned because what we have is 
sort of a gamesmanship going on. I guess ``hostage taking''

[[Page S3602]]

would be the best analogy people would understand.
  We have historically had a situation where the House has been very 
questionable on the trade issue. Congressional districts tend to be 
small, especially in big States, and it is easy for individual Members 
to have very parochial interests. It is much harder for Senators 
because every Senator is a farm State Senator, every Senator has a 
diversity of economic activity in their State. The net result of that 
is--not that Senators are wiser people than Members of the House; I 
doubt if they are--we have consistently had over 70 Senators who have 
been pro-trade on issues we have used as measures of trade: giving 
trade promotion authority, giving WTO membership to China, and other 
trade-related issues.
  So when the House passed trade promotion authority, in an 
extraordinary act of political leadership--I would have to say that 
never in my adult lifetime have we had leadership in the House of 
Representatives as effective as the leadership team is today--never. 
Their leadership, in passing trade promotion authority, was nothing 
short of extraordinary. But once they did that, it was obvious to a 
blind man that we were going to pass trade promotion authority. And 
then the question became, When and under what circumstances?
  We passed a bill in the Finance Committee by an overwhelmingly 
bipartisan majority to send trade promotion authority to the floor.
  I would have to say our trade promotion authority bill has some sort 
of silly statements in it, almost nonsensical. But the substance of the 
bill is excellent. I congratulate the chairman and the ranking member. 
America is not going to get anything but richer, freer, and happier if 
we adopt this trade promotion authority bill, and adopt it just as it 
is written. I do not intend to support an amendment to it.

  If all we were doing were bringing trade promotion authority to the 
floor, my guess is, in the end, we would get about 70 votes. But now, 
extraordinarily, we have people on my side of the aisle, who have never 
voted for trade before, who are saying: Well, I will vote for trade 
promotion authority if you will add all these new entitlements, all 
these new, committed, long-term spending programs. Well, great, but we 
already have 20 too many votes. Lyndon Johnson used to say: If you can 
get more than 55 votes in the Senate, you gave away too much.
  So I appreciate people who are willing to become the 71st or 72nd, 
but the idea that we are going to put on all these new spending 
programs, that will help bankrupt the country in the future, to get 71 
votes instead of 70, that is a nonstarter to me.
  I also say to our Democrat colleagues, they need to pass this bill as 
badly as we need to pass it because this bill is in America's interest.
  When the votes are cast, we are probably going to get 44 or so, I 
guess, Republicans to vote for it, and my guess is we are going to get 
26, 27, 28 Democrats, after all is said and done, on a clean bill.
  Republicans are more pro-trade than Democrats. But, look, Democrats 
do not want to go to the high-tech industry of this country, which is 
critically dependent on exports, and say: We killed fast track when the 
House passed it.
  Now, why do I go to all this trouble to say both sides of the aisle 
are for this bill? The reason I do is, now that it is clear this bill 
is going to pass--it is going to pass by a big vote--all of a sudden 
people are saying, well, look, we will not vote for it unless you pay 
tribute, unless you take some totally extraneous issue to trade 
promotion authority, and combine it, and create these massive new 
benefits for people--and I am going to talk about that in just a 
moment--unless you do that, we are not going to vote for it.
  The point is, if we had a clean vote on trade promotion authority, 
under the worst of circumstances, it would pass. It is true that the 
majority probably could tie this up in parliamentary knots, and this 
could go on and on and on, but who is kidding--I started to say, who is 
kidding whom, but I am not sure that is proper grammar.
  This reminds me of the O. Henry story, Ransom of Red Chief, where a 
couple of lowlifes kidnap a child, and this kid is a terrible brat.
  So they contact the kid's parents asking for ransom, and they say, 
no, they don't want him back. And so the kidnappers are stuck with this 
kid. The story ends with the kidnappers paying the parents to take the 
child back.
  That is the game we have underway here. Our distinguished majority 
leader is saying to us: If we don't pass this new entitlement, we are 
not going to pass trade promotion authority. Some people may be fooled, 
but I am not fooled. I want to pass trade promotion authority, and I 
want to pass it because I believe in it. But I don't believe I want to 
pass it any worse than the majority leader wants to pass it.
  This bluff may work. But I am a firm believer, if you know people 
aren't going to shoot the hostage, don't pay the bribe.
  Now, let's talk about the bribe. Here is where we are. We currently 
have a law called trade adjustment assistance. In my opinion it is 
fundamentally wrong. What it says is the following: We have two 
workers, Joe and Sarah. Sarah works for a company that is destroyed in 
a terrorist attack, and Joe works for a company that becomes 
noncompetitive and shuts down and is able to claim that foreign 
competition had something to do with it.
  The person who works for the company that was destroyed in a 
terrorist attack gets unemployment insurance. That is it. But the 
person who works for the company that became noncompetitive--something 
that employee may well have had something to do with--gets much more 
generous benefits.
  I don't understand that. We have two Americans. They both work for 
companies.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used all his time.
  Mr. GRAMM. I ask unanimous consent for 10 additional minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAMM. We have two workers in America. They both work. They are 
both citizens. They are both guaranteed under the Constitution equal 
protection of the law. Yet the worker whose business is destroyed in a 
terrorist attack--something they have had no ability to have any impact 
on--gets one set of benefits. But a person who works for a company that 
becomes noncompetitive and goes out of business gets an entirely 
different and more generous set of benefits, even though we might argue 
at the margin--and I am not arguing it, but you might argue--that maybe 
they could have had potentially some effect on it, whereas a worker 
with a company that is destroyed by terrorism could have had no effect 
on it.
  I have always been struck with this trade adjustment assistance, how 
it can make sense to treat people differently, both of whom are 
unemployed, simply because one lost their job to foreign competition or 
can claim it, and the other one can't.
  Forget all that. That is an old injustice. I hadn't gotten over it. 
Maybe I should have.
  But now we come along with a new trade adjustment assistance bill 
that says, in addition to this more generous benefit package, we are 
going to give it not just to people who lose their jobs to foreign 
competition, we are going to give it to people who say their job was 
related to the job that was lost because they were suppliers, or that 
their job was related to the job that was lost because they were 
selling things to the people who lost their jobs. I guess in the 
extreme, if you are a dairyman and people at this factory were buying 
milk, you could claim trade adjustment assistance.
  Then they add a brand new extraordinary benefit, and that is the 
Government is now going to pay 73 percent of your health insurance when 
you are unemployed. In fact, one of our colleagues today said that is 
the amount you get if you are a Senator. Well, lose your election and 
find out how much you get--zip, zero.
  Here is the point: How can we justify taxing workers who don't get 
health insurance in their jobs when they are working to provide 73 
percent of the health care cost for people who are unemployed? When we 
don't have health insurance for many people who are working, how can we 
justify taxing them to pay for benefits for people who are unemployed? 
And if we provide this benefit, A, we are going to have to pay for it. 
And, B, how can we justify not

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giving it to people who are working when we are giving it to people who 
are not working?
  Currently only about one out of every four people who qualify for 
trade adjustment assistance take the benefit. Most of them don't take 
it because it is more generous than unemployment, but it is generally 
not as good as getting another job. I would say if you lost your job to 
trade, trade promotes jobs generally, your chances of getting another 
job in the economy are probably better.
  But in any case, I think the question we have to ask ourselves is the 
following: If one-fourth of the people who are eligible take the 
benefits now, don't you think the number will go up when the Government 
is going to pay 73 percent of their health care costs?
  My guess is we might even see as much as a quadrupling of the people 
who take trade adjustment assistance. We get numbers tossed around 
about how many billions of dollars this new benefit will cost. But 
nobody knows because we don't know how we are going to change behavior 
with it. And how many people who now go out and get a new job would not 
go out and get a new job if they have 73 percent of their health care 
costs being paid for while they are unemployed?
  These are questions to which we have no answers. I remind my 
colleagues, last week we discovered that a budget that had a huge 
surplus last year was $130 billion in deficit this year, with us 
spending every penny of the Social Security surplus. Our colleagues 
often like to talk about it. They want to protect the Social Security 
surplus. Yet we are talking about imposing a rider on this trade bill 
that is going to cost billions of dollars, and every penny of it is 
going to come right out of the Social Security surplus. Much of it is 
going to be borrowed.
  My view is that we should not pass this bill with this provision on 
it. It is subject to a point of order, or at least I believe it will be 
if we ever see the bill. It seems to me it is perfectly consistent--in 
fact, I think it is the definition of consistency--if we believe we 
need trade promotion authority and we ought to have a freestanding vote 
on it, and then if the Senate wants to bring up trade adjustment 
assistance, it ought to do that. But the idea of tying the two 
together--they didn't come out of the Finance Committee together--is 
fundamentally wrong.
  There are a whole lot of other problems. For some reason, our 
Democrat colleagues have concluded that while we are going to pay 71 
percent of the health care bills for the people who are drawing this 
trade adjustment assistance, we are not going to let them choose their 
health insurance.
  Freedom is dangerous. If we start letting them choose their health 
insurance, God knows what they are going to want to be able to choose 
next.
  So, extraordinarily, there is a provision in this bill that says you 
have to buy exactly the same insurance you had when you had a job and 
your company was a big part of buying the health insurance. How many 
people who are unemployed--say you lost your job with General Motors 
where they are notorious for having benefits such as first-dollar 
coverage--how many people want to be forced to buy that same benefit 
when they are unemployed?
  Doesn't it seem logical to you that if you are unemployed, you might 
take a higher deductible so the money you got from the Government would 
buy you a larger share of your cost, so that the 29 percent you would 
have had to pay could go to help send your children to college or buy a 
training program? Why do we have to make people buy the Cadillac health 
insurance policy when they are unemployed, when they might choose to 
buy the Chevrolet policy?
  I have a very hard time understanding those who would impose this on 
us saying, no, you cannot let these people choose. My position is, if 
you are going to provide this benefit, which, A, I don't believe we can 
afford and, B, I don't know how you justify giving to some people and 
not others, why not let them pick and choose the health care coverage 
that is best for them? Why not allow them to buy a Chevrolet policy 
when they were getting a Cadillac policy--when the company was paying 
for almost all of it--when it is partly their money? I don't understand 
why we have to do that.
  So I wanted to come over today to simply make a these points: One, I 
am for trade promotion authority. Two, I think we ought to pass it as a 
clean bill. Three, I assume there will be a point of order against 
trade adjustment assistance, and it would be my intention to make the 
point of order against that provision. There is not a point of order 
against trade promotion authority. So I am hopeful we can come to some 
accommodation.
  Finally, the one thing you learn when you are a member of a 
legislative body, such as the Senate, is that seldom do you get things 
the way you want them, that almost always there is some kind of 
compromise. I think we should pass trade promotion authority 
freestanding. But if we do end up with a compromise on trade adjustment 
assistance, I think we are a long way from being there. I think it 
needs to be very narrowly defined to be benefits for people who really 
lose their job due strictly to trade. I think you have to make this 
benefit affordable, remembering you are going to be taxing working 
people, who don't get health insurance, to buy Cadillac coverage for 
people who are unemployed. How can anybody believe that is rational?
  How would you justify at a town meeting if some guy stood up and 
said: I don't get it. I work at the local company that sells tires, and 
I change tires, and I don't get health insurance through my job. But 
you are taxing me to buy first-dollar-coverage health insurance for 
somebody who is unemployed. Why do you treat unemployed people better 
than you treat employed people? I don't get it. I am not going to have 
to answer that question because I am going to say it is stupid, typical 
of Government, and I am not for it. Of course, normally, somebody back 
in the corner says: Yeah, but you were there when it happened. It 
always bugs me when that happens. But it hasn't happened yet, and I am 
going to do my best to see that it doesn't happen. I wanted to cover 
all these issues.
  I hope we can get on with trade promotion authority. I hope we can 
work something out. I know the President wants this. There have been 
more than 130 trade agreements reached worldwide, to date, of which we 
are not a part. When our trading partner, Mexico, has entered into nine 
free trade agreements covering 26 countries and the U.S. has entered 
into three trade agreements, NAFTA, Israel and Jordan, covering four 
countries, and when we have not entered into these trade agreements 
because we don't have trade promotion authority, something is wrong. 
This is the greatest trading country in the history of the world. I 
hope we can get on and pass the bill in a rational way.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to 
speak as in morning business on the matter of this trade bill that is 
before us.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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