[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 59 (Friday, May 10, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4186-S4188]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 TRADE

  Mr. GREGG. Madam President, last night an agreement was reached on 
this trade promotion authority, on the trade adjustment language, and 
the Andean trade agreement, three bills which have been bundled by the 
majority leader--there is a fourth one, the general tariffs agreement--
that we have been trying to work through as a body. Last night, I 
understand the parties negotiated a comprehensive settlement to these 
issues involving trade and trade adjustment.
  Trade promotion authority is very important legislation. We as a 
nation, and States such as New Hampshire specifically--and States such 
as the Presiding Officer's State especially--depend inordinately on our 
capacity to have free trade with other countries because our States, 
our culture has its competitive edge not in some material or commodity 
we produce, such as an agricultural good or oil; our economic advantage 
in New Hampshire is that we have people who are very bright and produce 
goods that are on the cutting edge.
  Unfortunately, in the international economy, when you are producing 
cutting-edge goods, there is a tendency of other nations that cannot 
keep up to block those goods from coming into their country.
  It always works to our advantage to open up a country's trade with us 
because the goods which we produce--which are on the cutting edge, 
which are the next generation, and always a step ahead of their 
competition--become available for sale in that country where we have 
opened barriers.
  In New Hampshire, for example, almost 30 percent of the jobs are tied 
directly to products which are produced and sold overseas. So trade 
promotion authority--which is basically a vehicle to allow the 
administration to negotiate trade agreements, almost all of which, I 
presume, will allow us to enter other markets--trade promotion 
authority is very important legislation. This Congress has passed it 
year in and year out--for many years. In fact, I voted for it 
innumerable times when I was in the House and even had a chance to vote 
for it in the Senate.

  Unfortunately, in the last few years, it has become tied up with 
other issues, but I do believe there has always been a strong 
bipartisan consensus to give the President trade promotion authority.
  Unfortunately, as I mentioned, we have now attached to trade 
promotion authority other issues because people realized around here 
that if there is a train leaving the station and you can put something 
on it, the odds are you are going to be able to pass it. These are 
items which might not pass under a freestanding situation. That is 
unfortunate because trade promotion is so important. It should not be 
thrown into this type of a bundle. It should be voted on separately. 
But the majority leader decided to bundle it.
  In that bundle he has put some things which I find to have serious 
problems, specifically the trade adjustment language and the expansion 
of the entitlements under the trade adjustment language.
  There are two major initiatives in this proposal which are going to 
significantly expand direct costs and burdens on the taxpayers of 
America and will open the door to policy activity in an arbitrary way, 
and we cannot see the unintended consequences yet, which I think are 
going to be significant and extraordinarily expensive.
  The trade adjustment bill, which is not involved in negotiating 
treaties, the purpose of which is to assist people whose jobs have been 
impacted as a result of trade activity--in other words, if you worked 
for a textile mill in New Hampshire maybe 20 years ago, and that 
textile mill was put out of business because of trade activity, because 
of low-cost cotton goods coming into the country--in fact, it happened 
even more recently than that. There are a couple companies in the 
western part of New Hampshire that have gone out of business in recent 
years as a result of trade activity. If you work for that type of 
company, under the trade adjustment authority, you would have certain 
benefits accrued to you in the areas of training and unemployment 
compensation so you can have an opportunity to get back into the 
workforce more quickly and be less impacted by that trade activity.
  What is being proposed in this bill, however, is a significant 
expansion to benefit those people--well-intentioned, obviously--who 
have been dislocated as a result of trade activities, specifically the 
expansion of health care coverage and a wage supplement should they not 
take a different job. Let's talk about both of these.
  Madam President, the health care benefit means if you lose your job 
and it is designated a job loss as a result of trade activity, you will 
be able to get health insurance. Seventy percent of the cost of that 
will be paid by the Federal Government. You will be out of work, but 
you will be able to get health insurance. You will have to buy it 
through a pooling agreement. You will not be able to go out on the 
market and buy it. You will have to buy it through a pooling agreement, 
and you will be reimbursed through what is called a refundable tax 
credit. It is a tax benefit, a payment which amounts to an entitlement 
payment and really is not tax related at all. You will get this money 
and be able to buy through this pooling agreement, theoretically

[[Page S4187]]

at least, health insurance. It might not be the health insurance you 
want, but you can buy it and get 70-percent support for it.
  What is the problem with that? It sounds pretty good. Yes, it is 
pretty good, obviously. What does it do? It does a couple of things. 
First, if you are working today in America, you may not have health 
insurance. You are paying taxes, but you may not have health insurance. 
There may be a variety of reasons you do not have health insurance.
  This bill says a person who is unemployed has a right to have their 
health insurance underwritten to the extent of 70 percent of its cost, 
but a person who is employed and may not have health insurance does not 
get health insurance. That clearly creates a huge inequity in our 
system.
  It is a new concept: If you are unemployed, you have a right to 
health insurance. But if you are employed and you do not have health 
insurance, you are out of luck.
  The implications of this are that either you are going to start 
covering everybody because, obviously, you are already covering the 
unemployed or you are going to leave a large segment of America saying: 
Hey, I am working for a living; I am paying taxes for a living; I do 
not have health insurance, but I have to pay extra taxes so that 
somebody who is not working can have health insurance.
  I think that is going to be hard to swallow for people who are 
working and do not have health insurance.
  In addition, the structure and the way the health insurance is going 
to be purchased make very little sense. The pooling agreements do not 
exist. In fact, the State that is probably furthest ahead in pooling 
agreements is New Hampshire, and we do not even have it up and running 
yet.
  The concept that one cannot go out in the marketplace and buy it if 
they want, that one has to buy it through some sort of structured event 
which may mean they are going to get insurance they do not need, 
coverage they do not need, costs they do not need, probably get a lot 
better deal maybe if they go out and buy it through a different system, 
the limitation which basically is forcing them to buy it in one 
specific way versus allowing them to use the marketplace, completely 
makes no sense. If this is going to be done, which to begin with is to 
create a major new entitlement, then it ought to at least be done in a 
way that makes economic sense to the person who is getting the benefit 
and makes sense to the insurance market so that a healthier insurance 
market is made rather than a less healthy insurance market.
  In this proposal, it will not be positive for health insurance for 
energizing better coverage. There is a major new entitlement being 
created under this bill, which is being created in back rooms 
somewhere, which has never really gone through the light of day of the 
committee process and which has very little to do with trade--in fact, 
nothing to do with trade, for that matter--and is opening the door to a 
huge new issue of how we deliver health care coverage in this country.
  As a result, it is setting down a path which we may not be able to 
get off and which may basically lead to a massive expansion along the 
lines of what was proposed by President Clinton of the way we address 
health care in this country, which is essentially a nationalization 
system. I do not think that is too far fetched a step to take. This is 
more than just putting your toe in the water as to moving down that 
road. When we start insuring people who do not have jobs and give them 
health insurance when there are people who do have jobs who do not have 
health insurance, it is going to be incredibly expensive. Who pays in 
the end? Well, the money we use in the Federal Government does not come 
from the sky. It comes from the wage earner. It comes from people who 
have to pay taxes.
  This is a huge, brandnew entitlement being put together in the middle 
of the night--this one especially in the middle of the night--which has 
not been properly vetted and which has significant issues surrounding 
it.
  The second concept in this bill which raises very serious public 
policy questions is this idea the Federal Government is going to come 
in and say to somebody who has lost a job as a result of trade activity 
that if that person goes out and finds a job that does not pay them as 
much as they had in the job they lost as a result of trade activity, 
the Federal Government is going to come in and arbitrarily pay a 
portion of the difference between what that person earned under their 
job prior to the trade activity and the job after the trade activity.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's 10 minutes have 
expired.
  Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent to proceed for another 5 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. GREGG. I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Missouri.
  What is the practical effect? Let's take an example. If someone is 
working, for example, for a steel company, which is an example that is 
fairly current considering the discussions, and they were being paid 
labor union wages at a very high rate--let's say they were making 
$40,000 a year, maybe more--and they lost their job allegedly because 
the steel was no longer competitive with the foreign steel that was 
coming in--there are a lot of factors that may have led to that, 
including the fact that wage rates were no longer competitive--and then 
they move out of that job and take another job--let's say they decide, 
well, I would like to teach; I have done steel for 20 years and I am 
tired of it; I want to do something else, maybe I want to go into 
teaching--and they get a teaching job at a private school, say a 
Catholic school that does not pay too much--it is more of a social 
service really--and they are getting paid $20,000 to do that, the 
$20,000 they are not making the Federal Government is going to come in 
and supplement and say, we are going to pay the difference or a portion 
of that difference.
  Well, that creates all sorts of unintended consequences and adverse 
selection issues. I can see a lot of people saying, I am going to close 
my company down, claim the trade caused them to close their company 
down and they are going to go out and get another job which pays a lot 
less, which is a job they always wanted to have; they are tired of 
doing this job, and they will let the Government pay the difference.
  The implications of this are absolutely staggering. One does not have 
to think too long to see what the implications are. And who is paying 
the cost? Where is this money coming from? The American wage earner, 
the people still working for a living, working hard, they have to pick 
up that difference. Essentially we are going to pay people not to be as 
productive as they were before, because in our society theoretically 
people are paid based on their productivity. The implications for our 
economy are significant; the implications for the Federal Treasury are 
significant; the implications for our taxpayers are significant. It is 
a public policy initiative of huge import, and maybe we want to do it, 
but I do not think we want to do it in the middle of the night the way 
this bill is proceeding.
  The trade adjustment language in this bill raises very significant 
problems, and to hook it to the trade promotion authority raises the 
question: Is it worth the price of getting trade promotion authority to 
put in place these types of expansive public policy initiatives which 
involve huge implications on the expenditure side of our Government? 
That is a question with which the Senate has to deal.
  Obviously, the Senate may be supportive of it, but it is a question 
with which we have to deal. I think it is a question we should vote on 
because it is way outside the budget and a point of order is 
appropriate to these two issues because they are outside the budget. We 
ought to at least have a supermajority addressing this issue rather 
than having it passed on a simple majority.
  I thank the Chair, and I especially thank the Senator from Missouri 
for his courtesy.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BOND. Madam President, first, I support and second very strongly 
the comments made by my good friend and colleague from New Hampshire. I 
am a traditionalist, and I like to see things

[[Page S4188]]

come out of the committee because, frankly, committee work ensures 
there is full consideration of all the measures that come to the floor. 
We have seen leadership rewriting bills--the farm bill, the energy 
bill, the stimulus bill--and the products are not good.
  What my colleague from New Hampshire has described seems to me not 
only a very expensive, very bad policy direction that has been taken on 
this trade adjustment assistance, it is beginning to smell to me like 
an effort to love it to death. I have been around legislative bodies 
long enough to know if one does not want to stand up and kill 
something, such as trade promotion, they do not want to come out and 
say, no, I am not for free trade, the best way to kill it is to put so 
much stuff on it that it sinks.
  This was not done in committee. This was not done in the light of 
day, as the Senator from New Hampshire said. This was done behind the 
scenes. This was an effort to sabotage trade promotion. I hope this 
body will say no. Frankly, if it were to go to the President with all 
of this junk on it, I hope he would veto it and send it back.
  We need trade promotion authority. We do not need a huge new 
socialistic program to have the Federal Government paying people's 
salaries when they are working. Trade adjustment assistance 
traditionally as we have had it, yes, it makes a lot of sense, but to 
have a whole new health care program, not going through the committee 
structure, a whole new income supplement program not fully considered, 
not aired out, put on this bill, I think is an outrage. I hope it does 
not take a supermajority to get this--or 41 votes to get it off.
  I hope we have an up-or-down vote and the people who are really for 
trade promotion authority, the people who want to give our farmers the 
opportunity to produce and sell in the world market will stand up and 
say no, we need trade promotion authority clean, not with all of these 
love handles on it.

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