[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 118 (Monday, July 23, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9776-S9777]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. BAUCUS (for himself, Ms. Snowe, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Coleman, 
        Ms. Stabenow, Ms. Cantwell, Mr. Salazar, Mrs. Murray, Mr. 
        Bingaman, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Levin, and Mr. Obama):
  S. 1848. A bill to amend the Trade Act of 1974 to address the impact 
of globalization, to reauthorize trade adjustment assistance, to extend 
trade adjustment assistance to service workers, communities, firms, and 
farmers, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, today, I am proud to join with my good 
friend and colleague Senator Snowe to introduce the Trade and 
Globalization Adjustment Assistance Act of 2007. This legislation would 
invest in America's workers and firms, farmer, and communities. It 
would help them to compete in the global marketplace.
  The open trade system that has evolved over the past 50 years has 
created new markets for American ingenuity. It has delivered more 
affordable goods to American consumers. In Montana alone, trade 
supports nearly one in five jobs.
  But for some Americans, trade-related economic change has not always 
been smooth. In 2005, the Owens and Hurst sawmill in Eureka, Mt, closed 
its doors. That mill fell victim to an onslaught of unfairly dumped and 
subsidized Canadian lumber. Jerry Ross, a supervisor at the mill, lost 
the job that she had held for over a decade.
  Jerry's prospects for reeployment looked dim. Luckily for Jerry, she 
qualified for Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA. With a diligent, 
caring job service caseworker by her side, Jerry charted a new course 
in life.
  Jerry has been training intensively the Building Trades program at 
the Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell, Mt. She is also 
taking accounting coursework. When she finishes her training in 
December, she will be qualified as a construction superintendent. She 
hopes to start her own business.
  Trade Adjustment Assistance helps tens of thousands of American 
workers like Jerry retrain for and fill jobs, right here at home. But 
the program is set to expire on September 30. It is up to this Congress 
to reauthorize and expand the program.
  I have consulted closely with workers in Montana. I have sought 
advice from not just Montana's Department of Labor I have also 
consulted with officials from Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, and 
Pennsylvania. I have sat down with unions, businesses, economists, and 
other experts.
  Everyone agrees. TAA is a lifeline to American workers reentering an 
increasingly global labor market.
  But for all the good that Trade Adjustment Assistance does, the 
current program is a complicated maze of hurdles and exceptions. For 
instance, workers can qualify for benefits if their jobs move offshore 
to Canada, Mexico, or another free trade agreement partner. But they 
will not qualify if their jobs move to China or India. Trade-displaced 
manufacturing workers can qualify for TAA if they lose their jobs. But 
accountants or any other service providers cannot. Workers can qualify 
for wage insurance, but only if they give up their right to retraining.
  It does not have to be this way. The Trade and Globalization 
Adjustment Assistance Act authorizes a more fair, flexible, and 
relevant program.
  Today's TAA overlooks the 80 percent of America's workforce employed 
in the services sector. Tens of thousands of workers who applied for 
TAA last year were shut out, simply because current law covers workers 
who produce ``an article.'' This technicality is a holdover from a 
different era. That was an era when only the manufacturing sector 
experienced strong foreign competition. We must extend the same 
protections to services sector workers.
  Equally confounding is why workers whose firms move to Canada deserve 
any less protection than workers whose firms move to India. 
Globalization does not adhere to any trade agreement. My bill will end 
this discrimination, by covering any workers whose jobs move offshore, 
regardless of whether our nations have a trade agreement in force.
  Losing health care coverage can be nearly as devastating as losing a 
job. In 2002, Congress passed legislation to provide TAA-certified 
workers and certain retirees with an advanceable, refundable healthcare 
tax credit to cover 65 percent of their insurance premiums. But few 
have used this credit to replace a portion of their former employer's 
contribution to their health care premiums. Since folks who are out of 
work cannot afford to pay more for health coverage, that means most are 
going without. Our bill would increase the Government share of 
participants' premiums to 85 percent. That could give workers a real 
shot at keeping their healthcare coverage. Our bill also would fix the 
glitches that have made it difficult for workers to access this tax 
credit.
  Our bill would also ensure that States have enough funds to pay for 
the 2 years of training to which TAA-certified workers are entitled. 
Today, the law caps the amount of available funds. That leads some 
States either to run out of or to ration training funds. The Baucus-
Snowe bill would double the cap on training funds. That would ensure 
that all workers, including newly eligible ones, get training. Our bill 
also includes a trigger to automatically raise the cap to respond to 
unanticipated training demands.
  Our bill also would make important improvements to the pilot wage 
insurance program that Congress created in 2002. Wage insurance helps 
older workers supplement lost wages when they get a new job. While 
older workers suffer worse wage loss, they are certainly not alone. Our 
bill would allow younger workers to participate in the pilot program. 
It also would eliminate the requirement that workers forfeit training 
if they opt for wage insurance. Instead, our bill would allow workers 
to choose what income assistance is right for them. They could choose 
this assistance either with training, without training, or after 
successfully completing training. Wage insurance should supplement, not 
supplant, TAA benefits.
  Our bill also would make important changes in the Commerce 
Department's TAA for firms program. This program helps workers and 
employers avoid painful layoffs in the first place. TAA for firms gives 
small businesses the technical assistance that they need to compete in 
the global economy. But the program runs a substantial backlog of 
approved but unfunded adjustment projects for participating firms. Our 
bill would extend coverage to services firms and triples funding to $50 
million annually.
  Likewise, our bill would improve the Department of Agriculture's TAA 
for Farmers program. It would ease the overly strict eligibility 
criteria that have kept many farmers and fishermen legitimately 
affected by trade from receiving assistance.
  But we can do more than that. Many communities in which workers, 
firms, or farmers have been certified for TAA are struggling to 
redefine their place in

[[Page S9777]]

the global market. This bill would create a new TAA for Communities 
program to help communities uniquely challenged by trade to plan for 
the future and to access grant funding to implement that future.
  Jerry Ross faced long odds when she lost her job. But because of 
Trade Adjustment Assistance, she has a bright career. ahead of her. 
Jerry believes in TAA. She traveled all the way to Washington, DC to 
urge its renewal and improvement at a Finance Committee hearing in 
June. I look forward to working with my Colleagues on the Finance 
Committee and in this chamber to ensure that this Congress does not 
disappoint Jerry and the tens of thousands of American workers just 
like her.
  Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, as we know, this administration has sought 
closer trade ties to a growing number of nations throughout the world. 
It asked the last Congress to consider four free trade agreements, and 
is currently negotiating at least that number of new agreements, in 
addition to the Doha round of the World Trade Organization. Yet, in its 
march to lower our tariffs on imported goods, we must be sure we are 
not selling our domestic businesses and their works short or-worse 
still--out.
  Last year saw a record U.S. trade deficit of $764 billion with the 
rest of the world. This includes bilateral imbalances with each of 
China, the European Union, and Japan. These are the latest figures 
demonstrating a steady slide of U.S. producers' market share in both 
the domestic and global markets.
  One of the most troubling features of the decline of America's trade 
profile is the dramatic reduction in the number of manufacturing jobs 
in recent years. Since 2000, America has lost approximately 3 million, 
or 17 percent of its manufacturing jobs. Maine has lost over 21,000 
jobs, representing over 26 percent of our manufacturing workforce. 
Other States have also found it difficult to retain these high-wage, 
high-benefit jobs as manufacturing operations move overseas and our 
demand for foreign-made goods surges.
  Unlike job losses due to technological advances, which are the 
initiative of private enterprise, trade liberalization that sacrifices 
foundational domestic industries is the chosen policy of government. We 
therefore have an obligation to ensure that the costs are not borne by 
these most vulnerable workers alone.
  That is why Senator Baucus and I--along with Senators Wyden, Coleman, 
and Stabenow--are today introducing the Trade and Globalization 
Adjustment Assistance Act of 2007, which will reauthorize and expand 
the TAA program to cover new groups of Americans disfranchised by trade 
liberalization, as I had proposed in previous Congresses.
  First among these are service workers and firms. While TAA currently 
aids U.S. citizens who lost their manufacturing jobs to trade, it fails 
to address the growing problem of those finding themselves unemployed 
as a result of foreign outsourcing, also known as offshoring. It is 
already bad enough that Americans who had careers in the service 
sector--which proponents of free trade argue should benefit from trade 
liberalization--are finding themselves out of work. But it is simply 
Kafkaesque that such service workers, now unemployed due to policies 
that were supposed to benefit them, would not be eligible for aid under 
TAA. That is why the legislation we are proposing today critically 
extends TAA to cover service workers and firms.
  It is similarly illogical for workers to be excluded from the TAA 
program simply because they lost their job due to multilateral trade 
liberalization carried out under the auspices of the World Trade 
Organization, as opposed to a bilateral trade agreement, such as a free 
trade agreement. Yet, thousands of workers remain ineligible for TAA 
benefits under current law because they happened to lose their job to 
trade competition from a WTO member such as China or India rather than 
an FTA partner country. Accordingly, our legislation extends TAA to 
cover Americans who have been adversely affected by trade 
liberalization with WTO member, such as China, who are often the worst 
offenders of international trade rules.
  Of critical importance to Maine and other coastal States is TAA's 
failure to cover fishermen who have suffered from the adverse effects 
of trade liberalization. U.S. fishermen have seen their livelihoods 
dissolve due to the reduction of duties on foreign fish and seafood 
imports. Yet, TAA benefits remain unavailable to these hard-working 
Americans under the current program. That is why I am pleased to 
cosponsor this legislation which will make such fisherman eligible for 
TAA.
  An additional concern with the present TAA program is its failure to 
address the inability of displaced workers in communities that have few 
jobs to offer. In small towns, including many in Maine, where the 
livelihood of the local economy often depends on one industry, one 
plant, or one company that is suffering under trade liberalization, the 
closure of that business is sure to cause economic ruin and devastation 
of individual lives.
  Accordingly, the legislation we are introducing today would create a 
program to address economic dislocation in entire communities 
negatively affected by international trade and provide readjustment 
assistance to such communities. As we approach the expiry of 
authorization for both the TAA program and trade promotion authority, I 
view inclusion of relief for trade-affected communities as a necessary 
component of any comprehensive trade package.
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